


He smells like petrichor

by lady_brontide



Series: Savour [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Adorable Grogu | Baby Yoda, Angst, Description of blood, Dom/sub Undertones, Domesticity, F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Smut, I didn't make up this self-defense technique but pls be advised there are better SAFER ones to use, Idiots in Love, Lots of frogs, Mentions of animal attack, Mugging, Mutual Pining, Protective Din Djarin, Protectiveness, Slow Burn, Smut, Soft Din Djarin, Sorry guys, The Mandalorian (TV) Spoilers, The Mandalorian/Female reader - Freeform, if you don't like beetles skip chapter 3, the mandalorian/you - Freeform, trauma response
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:27:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29013546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_brontide/pseuds/lady_brontide
Summary: Five times the Mandalorian is a protective caretaker to you and the kid, and one time you protect him and the kid.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Reader
Series: Savour [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2191380
Comments: 71
Kudos: 403





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *Canon deviation starting at the end of Season 1.  
> **I'm a sucker for protective-Mando trope.  
> ***Please enjoy as I try to finesse an entire character's development in six chapters.

Thirty-seven solar cycles since you left your home world and everything about the Razor Crest is a surprise. The power lines are messy and corroding, the electrical work is shoddy. The schematic you’d asked the Mandalorian for isn’t comprehensive at all, and you’d privately made it your project to take every chance you set down dirt-side to re-write the manual. 

Well. _Write_ the manual. 

The green kid loves it. He sits in your lap and happily holds cables you hand him until you’re done cataloguing and ready to re-connect them. It’s grueling, but talking out-loud to the green bean helps stave off your exhaustion. He loves to be held and talked to. You’re happy to hold him against your hip and oblige. 

You have no idea if your inquiries to the baby about the ship’s guts bother the Mandalorian. You hardly see him anyway. 

He’s a predator, and he acts like it. You never see him sleep. He hunts for hours and brings back bodies walking or dragging-it doesn’t seem to matter to him. You do your part to keep the ship flying and take care of the kid, and leave him food on the dashboard or in the recessed cot he shares with the kid. Sometimes after a long hunt he comes and takes your work buddy from you and recedes to the cockpit. You guess it's how he deals with not carrying the child on hunts anymore. 

You have no idea if he eats. _He must_ , you think, _he isn’t a droid_. You literally wouldn’t know that except for one time he’d shucked his gloves to cradle the kid after a particularly bad encounter with a stick bug and seen his hands. Fingernails and crevices along his knuckles. Human for sure. 

There are always three bowls to clean though. 

He’s been up in the cockpit for a few hours, hopefully still sleeping. You’d climbed up there to ask where his toolkit was but he didn’t respond, and the kid was trying desperately to climb out of Mando’s heavy grip. You’d sprung him and taken him downstairs to help you track some more wiring. He gratefully cooed at you for freeing him. 

“Come on, snack time,” you tell him. 

You like digging into the ship. It’s exciting and similar to genetics, finding what makes the organism tick, grow, change, evolve. You could get by as a mechanic, but being around green things was really your strength, and the heat of the greenhouses always made you feel better. You don’t doubt you could do a number of software and hardware updates on the ship over time if Mando let you. But you need a blueprint first. 

You’ve only been working for an hour with the baby happily munching on a jerky piece in your lap when Mando’s boots make contact with the hull. You peek at him quickly before returning to your work. 

“We’re dropping out of hyperspace soon. The atmosphere on this planet is dense. Could get bumpy,” he says simply. You’re used to the utilitarian way he talks. Just enough and no more. It’s just with you though. You know for a fact he talks nonsense the kid. 

“Where are we?” you ask, setting your tools down and latching the box shut one-handed.

“Dagobah-” 

Hyperspace falls away and deposits the Razor Crest in a gritty atmosphere, and you’re thrown side-ways at the change. Wild beeping comes from the cockpit, alarms on the navcomp system screeching to alert you something is _wrong._ You scoop the baby against the u-shape of your body as you try to make it to your knees on the quaking hull floor. Mando has one arm wrapped around the ladder and a boot jammed against the steel. He’s furiously clicking buttons across his vambrace and _does_ get one beeping system to stop. 

An updraft kicks the side of the ship up and you’re swearing furiously under your breath as you’re thrown down against the hatch. You hope this isn’t the day it decides to yield to atmospheric pressure whistling against it. The Mandalorian makes another complicated set of beeps in-between furious swearing that pitches the ship forward this time, throwing your curved body directly toward the cockpit opening and into the buckethead’s armor. 

Your head contacts the beskar chest plate, and you hear an awful noise rip out of your throat at the impact. The Mandalorian wraps his whole arm grasping around your shoulders, your face squished against him. _This kid has never been safer,_ you think as Mando hitches you against his ribcage. You close your eyes and taste the iron sting of blood against your lip, and between the baby cooing, Mando swearing, and the growl of the Crest encountering-that’s too nice a word, let’s call it battling-the atmosphere, you’re disoriented. 

The ship clangs and pitches sideways _again._ You groan as the grip around you shoulder slips under your armpit and is hard as durasteel, and Mando lets out a pained grunt when your knees clank against the inside of his thighs. You want to curl up and die from embarrassment, but if you do, you’ll drop the baby, so you try to wrap an ankle around the back of his knee, and end up forcing your whole thigh against him. 

_Fuck_ you think miserably, cheek scrunched against the harsh drop off between his chest plate and cloak. 

You suck in a breath, too scared to take too much in or you’ll throw up. You close your eyes as the hull screams against the troposphere, g-forces squishing all three of you together, hot and freezing all at once. Mando pulls you tighter if that’s possible to get at his vambrace buttons. You think you’re going to scream. When the beeping finally stops, the ship slows and levels out. The Mandalorian doesn’t let go until the Crest has flown smoothly for a full 10 seconds, and you can hear him breathing deeply through the helmet filter. He releases you slowly, hands off once both feet are planted securely on the full floor. He takes the kid from you, probably to check him over himself. All you can do is hang onto the ladder and slowly, slowly slide down the wall. 

It’s a sickening few moments where you’re somewhere between throwing up and passing out. You’ve traveled in space before, but never in such an old ship, and always been strapped in. This is-fucking terrifying.

“Are you hurt?” he asks. Concern laces his voice, enough to sound interested. You try to shake your head but it’s still ringing from contact with his chest plate and you end up reaching up to thumb your lip. 

“I think my lip is bleeding,” you say. You can taste it’s metallic richness on your tongue tip. Running your fingers a little higher you feel the indent on your cheek from where your face was pressed into his armor. 

“You’ve got a bruise on your temple too,” he tells you, gently handing the kid back to you. “I’ll find a landing site then see about the swelling.” 

Once he’s back in the cockpit you move around on shaky legs to find the floating pram in the hull’s carnage. Crates are everywhere, and it takes some effort to free it from the mess. You settle the kid inside it. He keeps reaching up one wrinkly hand toward your head. Even though your stomach is in knots you start moving containers back to where they should be, anything to occupy you away from a bought with burning alive. Your head feels like it's swimming, and you’re moving a little slower than you should be. 

“Any luck?” you try to call up. Landing in Dagobah can take the better part of a solar cycle, so you've heard. It’s surprising the ship sets down less than an hour later. You’ve barely moved...three crates? That doesn't seem right. _For an hour? It should be done_. 

When Mando slides down the ladder with a medkit in hand he finds you with your hands on your hips, staring blankly at one crate that...is just too heavy to move. 

“You done?” he asks, startling you out of your focused attempt to make the box _move_.

“I don’t understand. I moved this yesterday,” you say. You realize slowly Mando has your elbow and is guiding you to his cot to sit. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure your concussion doesn’t cause permanent damage,” he says. He jerks his head at the closet he calls a bed, and you lean back against it. “Sit, don’t lean.” You push yourself back further until you’re seated. Shoving your knees to the side with his hip, he stands blocking your escape from the cot and the med-scanner. You pull back a little when the red-blinker shines directly in your eye, but Mando’s quick and not having an argument. He grips your jaw not ungently, and proceeds to inspect your head wound. You stare directly at the spot where you think is forehead would be. He’s leaning heavily into your knees: he knows you will try to escape medical care. Or maybe he just needs something to ground against too. It wouldn't surprise you. 

“I think it’s fine,” you say, tonguing the spot you can taste blood on inside your mouth. 

“Beskar has been known to kill people on impact,” he replies tiredly. Like you should have known that. “Lucky for you, this is a concussion. You’ll have a bump for a while,” and to prove it he pokes a finger into your still forming egg. “This bounty should take a few hours. I suggest you turn out the lights and sleep.” He holds the cooling pack to your skull, and you reach up to hold it in place so he can release your legs and pack away the scanner. 

“The kid has been cramped, he’ll want to play,” you tell him. He snaps the medkit closed and looks directly at you. 

“You aren’t much use if you can’t think clearly,” he tries back. “I’ll take him with me. Might find a lizard or something to eat.” 

“Mando-”

“Zip it,” he scolds. He’s gigantic in the suit of armor, and you sit dutifully still as he doles out pain medication for you to take. “Take these. Then lie down.” He watches you swallow the gel capsules down, and you sigh in relief as soon as they kick in and settle the nausea in your stomach. 

“How long will you be gone?” you know he just told you. 

“Few hours,” he says. He shoves a crate away with the flat of his boot and finds your crumpled bedroll on the hull floor. You obediently curl up on the non-lump side, drowsiness overtaking your body. He’s clinking around the armory. You hear the dull snap of blasters and charges. 

As soon as you close your eyes, everything is quiet.

* * *

The Razor Crest had landed at the vineyard’s loading docks before midday on Pamarthe. You’d heard the push against the sound barrier while in your greenhouse as your shift ended. Sweaty and satisfied with hours put in, you'd gone to meet your neighbor for a tasting of the sample blend. A newly modified vine that you’d all hoped would produce a slightly new taste in the vintage community. 

You’d been giggling over the strong draft with your neighbor Anijae when you heard your shift super call your name from behind you. _No thank you,_ you thought about saying. 

“I’m off duty, Flitt” you say instead, barely turning. 

Her hand clapped down on your shoulder and you almost sent your elbow reeling into their ribs. “This Mandalorian needs a guide,” she tried again testily. 

You leaned back to see behind her, and sure enough a full suit of new beskar with a rifle strapped to its back and a tote lying across its shoulder stood waiting. Your brain is wine-addled and the first thing you think is _big-_

“You need a guide?” you ask, clearing your throat, and hoping to high stars he didn’t see you leering. _He did,_ your second brain chimes in, _he one hundred percent saw._

Following him out of the bar, you hear Anijae tell Flitt _she’s a fool_ , and _she’s not coming back,_ and _haven’t you heard the stories_?

You led him on a safe path through quarries and rock rubble to a bunker the Rebel Alliance had used for a time, and now was regularly degraded by fugitives and tipsy patrons, who were sometimes the same life forms. 

“Do you live here?” he’d asked, one of the few things he’d said the whole trip. You were both lying belly down looking over a ledge leading down into a stony gully devoid of foliage. 

“My whole life,” you respond. You think for a second he can’t be that dangerous. He’s got a green critter with huge soft ears tucked in a bag behind his elbow. It reaches a little clawed hand at you. “There are housing units built into the cliff face above the greenhouses.” He tilts his helmet to the side. “Do you need anything else from me?” you asked, ready to ditch your work jumpsuit for something comfy. 

He considers for a moment, and you squirm a little under the visor slit. “Yes,” he says, and removes the satchel with the kid from his person..

...and pushes it toward you. 

You looked at the kid. He looked at you through big bulbous eyes, and before you can protest, he’s got a little hand tugging on your hair. You sigh and lean into his tiny hand. 

“My unit is four-seventeen,” you tell Mando, scooping the baby up, and striding away. You aren’t really sure if this is a gift or a temp job, but the kid falls asleep on the walk home, and you aren’t complaining. 

You took a day off of work to watch the kid. A day turns into two, and two turns into three, so you take him to the greenhouse with you for your shifts. He’s happy to walk up and down the rich soil plots, but you have to stop him from eating the pollinating lizards. A...few times. 

The Mandalorian shows up late on day four. You and the baby are curled up on your couch, resting after dinner. You had had to gently uncurl the little green bean’s claws from your undershirt while handing him back over to the Mandalorian.

“What do I owe you?” Mando asks when you hand the kid back over. 

“Nothing. He was fun to watch. Don’t suppose you need a full time babysitter?” you ask, half-kidding. The kid has one of your fingers wrapped in his claws. In Mando’s arms he looks itty bitty. _First_ big _, and now nanny? Get it together_. 

Mando lets his helmet fall to the side, considering. You feel a blush come over your cheeks, that was too forward. “What I do isn’t safe for little ones. He seems to like you.”

“I like him too,” you say. The thought of abandoning your little apartment is very appealing all of a sudden. You can't be a wine-geneticist your whole life. “Whatever you’re doing sounds dangerous.”

“It is,” he concedes. You leap. 

“Should I pack my blaster?” 

“I’d advise it.”

“When do you leave?” 

“Now,” he says. 

Pamarthe glows violet in space.

* * *

The edges of the dreamscape are disturbed by clunking boots and rifle thunks. Your dream about thick pickle-green vines and caves is shaken out of focus. 

Mando’s knee sets into your blurry vision. The scrape of his glove against your bruise makes your mouth twist in pain. Who needs weapons when you can just incite enemies to head-butt you and instantly die. 

Once you’re out of the atmosphere, he comes back and holds a cool pack against your head with one hand, and the snoring kid in the other. He uses your shoulder as a pivot point.

“You smell good,” you hear yourself mumble. You’re going to blame it on pain meds later, or just deny ever saying it. _Forever_. 

“I smell like a swamp,” he rasps. 

“No…” you trail off. “Like healthy dirt. Like ozone.”

“Like I said,” he says, lifting the cool pack to inspect the lump. “Swamp.” 

“Was it raining outside?” you ask quietly, barely above a whisper. Your throat is parched, the pain meds must have absorbed all the water in your system. It’s a coherent sentence, and you’ll never be able to deny telling him he smells good now. 

“Yes,” he answers, prodding at your forehead. 

You hum and let the lull of hyperspace rock you back to sleep. 


	2. Chapter 2

“Listen,” you tell the kid after scooping him up maybe the tenth time that day, “either you stay with me and play with your ball and your bath only lasts five minutes-” he cocks his big ears at you “-or I let you soak in a pot until you’re stew.” 

He gives you an annoyed gurgle and sinks a little in his robes. He’s got mud halfway up his body from running through grime, but he’ll sleep great tonight. And better yet, as soon as he’s plopped in a cooking pot with some warm water and a handful of pollywogs you’d found in a nearby stream, he forgets how upset he was and splashes happily. You settle on the ground with the cook pot full of baby between your outstretched legs. 

You’re going to sleep great too tonight. Before the kid was awake, you took the afternoon to repair bad paneling and poorly functioning machinery in the Razor Crest. The planet you’re on is humid, icky. The Mandalorian’s cast off gloves you’d found under the cockpit dashboard hadn’t been any help while welding, so you’d risked handling the metal bare and ended up with first degree burns and a dozen blisters. 

You lift your shiny hands out of the water to inspect the burns running down the edges of your palms. “Your dad is going to be so annoyed,” you tell the kid. He’s busy and ignores you. 

You blow air out your mouth in exasperation and the baby mimics the sound. You set your hands back in the water and watch him try to catch the wriggling critters. 

Putting the paneling back up had been tenderly done. Even holding the child was irritating your hands after a few minutes of respite, which wasn’t good, because...that’s your whole job. Hold the kid. Technically you didn’t have to do any paneling work or write a ship schematic or cook. You do that because the baby sleeps twelve hours a day and hyperspace is boring, and Mando doesn’t talk to you that much except when he has too.

It’s really talking _at_ you _._

“You’re much better company,” you tell the kid. He really does not care about you right now, so you take the chance to cup some water in your hands and run it down the back of his head. He grumbles unhappily when some runs down into his eyes, but quickly rubs it out. His bath water is cooling rapidly but you’re reluctant to dump it out, especially when it’s the first time in hours your hands haven’t ached. 

There’s a soft contentment in your chest watching the kid float on his back and chew on a pollywog. Normally you’d be terrified to be out in the bush alone, but the Razor Crest stands guard behind you, and Mando is the scariest thing in the woods right now, so you’re happy to let the baby play a while longer and just listen to the dusk noises of this planet. Water noises from the stream you’d gathered the pollywogs from bubble along peacefully. A bird that looks similar to a double-horned heron from your homeworld sits in a tree nearby and makes a grating sound in its throat, the vibrations pass through your body. You keep your ears open and blaster nearby in case that bird decides it is a predator. You aren’t a bit surprised when it takes off suddenly, and Mando appears on the other side of the clearing. He’s got his bounty trailing behind him sullenly. Probably one of the few resigned to their icy fate. 

“Time to go, kid,” you say and gently pull him out of the steel pot and swaddle him snugly. You try to keep him secure with your fingertips instead of your whole hand. You kick the pot over to dump it out and follow Mando up the ramp to get ready for flight. You squeeze past him to the hatch ladder, and try to cover up the sound of hiss that escapes you climbing the ladder rungs one handed, and injured. Baby in your lap, you start the flight check and set the navigation. The engines turn over gleefully as you urge them to take off. 

He’ll take a couple hours to clean up and go over his weapons. 

Maybe he just won’t notice.

It’s fine.

* * *

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks. You choke on your caf, but manage to swallow it down before spitting all over the controls. 

It’s been quiet for hours and you were happily snuggling the baby against you as he slept curled in the v-shape you’ve created. 

Peeking over your shoulder, sure enough, Mando is there. Taking up the whole doorway. 

“Nothing.” You take your feet off the dashboard and sit up straighter. _Go away,_ you will. 

“Yeah?” he asks. You let out a yelp when he snatches one of your wrists and turns your palm over to inspect it. “ _What_ is _this_?” You swallow hard. He almost sounds mad. 

You purse your lips and meet his gaze through the slit in his visor. Slowly, you try to rescue your wrist but his grip only gets tighter. “It is a first degree burn from a welding gun.”

With a sigh he says “stay here.” He drops your wrist and disappears down the hatch. You look at your hand. It isn’t really that bad. You’ve had worse from heating lines and power grids keeping the greenhouses warm back home. A scar from a live wire graces your thigh. These won’t be your last burns. It's a lifelong hazard when you work with electronics. 

He comes back at last with a medkit and the cradle, and takes the baby from you. 

“Show me your hands,” he orders. Sheepishly you swivel in the pilot chair and present them to him. He sighs audibly. 

“You know where I’m from we call this ‘sign of a job well done’,” you try to joke. The helmet shakes a little as he sets your hands on his knees palms up and starts applying bacta directly to the abrasions. 

“I call it ‘inability to mind your surroundings,’” he says back. You almost snort at the sarcasm in his voice. “How did you get these?” He presses a thumb into one scarlet mark and you snatch your hand back hissing sharply. He waits patiently for you to return it. 

“I was opening some panels on the outer hull, then welding them back on. The sun heated up the metal, my hands were slipping…” you trail off. 

“A blueprint isn’t worth burning your hands over,” he answers. “As much as I appreciate you trying, I’d prefer if you stayed uninjured.”

Your lip turns up in a half-smile. He holds gauze against your palms and the heels of your hands. One of your thumbs has the worst singe mark, near blistering, and he spends extra time padding it with cotton before wrapping it in medical tape. The engines rumble softly as they sling you sub-light through the system's gravity well. 

“We’ll land in the next system in a few hours. I’m changing these before I go,” he tells you. 

“I could do it myself, you know?” He tilts his helmet up but keeps applying the tape to your left hand. 

“You won’t. Then you’ll blister, then I’ll have to listen to you be in pain for weeks.” He releases your left hand and moves to your right. “This way I know it gets done.”

You aren’t sure what to say. You nod in affirmation and let him finish what he started. 

* * *

“This moon is dangerous,” he says while sandwiching your hands between his and around a cooling pack. “Don’t open the hull for anything.”

You yawn into your shoulder but nod. 

Mando woke you up with a shake on your ankle to shower and get dressed so he could change your bandages before he left for a quarry. You stand bleary eyed and in need of caf in your soft clothes while he has a full munition belt and rifle strapped to his back. 

You’d set down on the moon of a dry gas giant less than an hour ago, and already he was ready to move. You were the only thing keeping him from going, and now you see why perhaps he’d like to _stop_ injuring yourself. 

“How long will you be out there?” you ask. He releases your hands and takes the cool pack away, and quickly pads your palms with clean gauze. 

“The fumes outside are toxic. An oxygen pack should keep me going for one day.” He motions for your other hand and repeats his ministrations. “When I leave the hull will depressurize and I only have the one O-two pack. You’ll have to stay in the cockpit until we can set down one moon over and pressurize with cleaner air.”

“What about you?” you ask. “You’ll need clean air if it takes long.”

“It won’t.” He says it like it’s obvious. This bounty isn’t even worth giving a thought of his safety over. The surety sends a jolt down your spine. 

“Copy that,” you say. Probably a little too quietly to give the impression of listening.

* * *

He’s back in six hours flat. The quarry is slung over his shoulders like a sack of rocks. 

The baby is overly excited at his return and taps the glass of the viewport. The moon’s surface is gusty and Mando probably can’t hear the child over the howling wind and his O-two pack. 

You’re already ready to fly by the time the hull closes and the comm beeps at you. 

“I’m here,” you say. 

“ _Fly to the third innermost moon.”_ He says it without preamble. 

“Copy.” 

You set down near a lake, or really surrounded by lakes. This moon is covered in water, a huge contrast to its dusty cousin. You hear the hull clunk open and you scoop the kid up-mindful of your hands-to go visit his dad. When you open the cockpit hatch you almost vomit. 

“What the _hell_ is that smell?” you yell down. Even the kid wrinkles his little nose. “Is that you or the outside air?” There’s no way in this good universe you’re going down there now. 

He appears, looking up into the cockpit hatch. Instead of reaching for him, the baby shrinks back into your chest. 

“It’s me,” he says simply. “That moon is covered in sulfur deposits.”

“Maybe you should, I dunno, shower? This place is safe right? We can set down for a while?” You’re rambling but _good maker_ you refuse to take off with him smelling like _that_. “You fucking reek, Mando.”

His shoulders rise dramatically. “What the hell,” he says tiredly. You hand the baby down to Mando who holds the poor kid away from his body in the tight space as you clamor down the ladder, trying to use the less-blistered hand. He cocks his helmet at you knowingly. 

“I need to change those bandages-” he starts and you snatch the kid before he can finish. 

“ _No._ Shower first. Bandages later. You’re not touching me like that,” you say and start down the ramp before turning around. “In fact,” you whip around. You swear the metal mask shifts slightly to his moods because he looks exasperated. “Throw your flight suit and clothes out. I’m soaking them.” 

“Not a ch-”

“Mando the scent has sunk into your clothes. It all has to be cleaned,” you reason. Glancing at the water surrounding the Razor Crest, there’s plenty of soft pebbles and spring water to scrub the sulfur out. “Keep the armor, just toss the soft stuff out.”

He doesn’t move for a few breaths. A breeze floats across your face. Finally, he lets his head hang back and you think grumbles out “fine” before turning away from you and starts undoing the complicated holds on the beskar. 

Moss covers the ground everywhere you look, so delicate you wonder if stepping on it would suffocate it. Delicate pink foliage and yellow-green plants poke out of the hundreds of water pools. You haven't’ seen any life forms yet, but the baby seems happy just to walk around the Crest and explore. There are no forests as far as you can see, only grasslands and springs. You could walk barefoot for miles.

Every world you stop on is incredible. Pamarthe is home, and it always will be, but traveling with Mando and the kid, getting to make progressive adjustments and have a real project to work on, running your hand on the sleek side of the Razor Crest and seeing the wind ripple the wild flora is home too. 

Back at the hatch a pile of dark clothes sit balled together, you pick them up just as you hear the fresher door snap shut. Mando only has two flight suits, so that means-

-you blush furiously and take the clothes to the nearest pool of water and start soaking the wretched smell out of them. 

He spends what feels like three showers worth of time in the fresher before you rap against the door. 

“What?” he calls out. His voice sounds different without the filter, and you’d never bother him right now except-

“Pass me a bar of soap.” 

The door cracks open and the end of a soap bar wiggles out at your eye level. “Scat,” you hear him say, and you grab the soap and run away before your fingers are crushed. 

The kid is napping in his cradle. You’ve scrubbed the flight suit, flak vest, and other garments as best you could and have them laid on the ramp drying in the star’s light. 

“My armor will need to be sanitized. I can do it once we’re in hyperspace,” he says behind you. You can tell he has his helmet back on. His voice is raspier through the high pass filter. 

“Do you want to leave now?” you say. You’re still staring at the endless mossy plains, the glassy waters. The fresh water had felt so good on your heated hands. You just held them under the surface for a while and breathed. 

“Once these are dry,” he says nudging his clothes. He’s got his boots on, and when you glance up at him, he’s in a clean flight suit but without any armor. You really had thought his broadness was all due to the armor, but looking up at him, you can tell it’s him. He’d be broad without pauldrons. You tap his thigh with the soap bar and he takes it from you with a gloveless hand. 

“Stay here,” he says. You nod and wait. He’s clunking back down the ramp with a medkit and sits down next to you. He’s already so quiet in the armor, you hope this armorless phase doesn’t last, otherwise you’ll never be able to predict him. Not that you have so far. But it’s the principle. 

You set your left hand on his knee without prompting. His hands are warmer than you expected. _He just got out of the shower, hot water, dummy._ He applies the bacta and new gauze, helmet down, concentrating. 

“No infection,” he declares and gestures for the right hand. You give it up easily. He keeps working, checking between your fingers for anything he missed. 

“It’s relaxing,” he says suddenly, so quiet you almost don’t hear it. You stare at the side of his helmet. “I’ve been caring for the kid for months. It’s...settling, after a hunt,” he explains. His voice sounds almost...regretful. He misses it. 

Leaning over a fraction you bump his shoulder with yours. 

“Thank you,” you say. 

He doesn’t respond. But he takes extra care padding the carmine blisters pearling like asteroid’s down your thumb.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *I did a quick ratio calculation to determine when sunrise would be (assuming sunrise is at 6am) on a planet that has a 52 day revolution and I do not think I did it right, so if someone knows how to do it properly, leave a comment and I'll fix the timing.

_One week after you left Pamarthe_

When you’d asked Mando if he would teach you how to fly the Razor Crest, he ignored you. 

The first time. 

The second time you were more persuasive. 

“Picture this,” you said from the door of the cockpit to the back of his helmet. “You’re running away from a predator, and we have to get in the air. I’m here with the kid-” you wave his little hand for him -”so I could get us in the air.”

He’d tilted his helmet to the side, contemplating, and eventually said, “No.”

The third time you didn’t have to ask. He stomped up the ramp of the Crest dragging a body behind him with gashes down its front, indicating an animal had gotten to them first. A big one. 

You already have a med-kit in hand by the time the quarry is frozen in a carbonite plaque. Mando presses one of his gloved hands to his left side, and sure enough, there’s a gash. 

“I’m taking off,” he tells you softly. He sounds exhausted. You stare blank-faced into his visor. You can’t fully replicate the beskar’s attunement to his shifting moods but it’s a damn good try. “It barely broke the skin.” He runs a loving finger of the child’s ear before pulling himself into the cockpit for flight check. 

“‘Barely broke the skin’,” you mock whisper to yourself later. The shirt he’d worn has a tear through it so big can easily shove your whole hand through. In the hull’s darkness you try your best to do a stitch job by a bright yellow work light over your bedroll, legs crossed. You’re going to be stiff in the morning, you can tell. You’d thought about using the staple-gun he had for quick repairs, but decided against it. He already has too much metal against his body. The kid’s crib is shut, and your eyes burn at the lamp’s heat. 

“Are you awake?” his disembodied voice calls down. 

“Yes.” The needle pokes uncomfortably into your fingertip. 

“Flight lessons start tomorrow.”

You smile for a long time after, until your cheeks ache.

* * *

“What’s this one?” 

“Landing array controls.”

“This one?”

“Hyperdrive engagement.”

“This one?”

“Transponder, but it stays off.”

“Good. This one?”

“Fuel lines and propulsion software.”

“This one?” 

“De-icing boots for the engines.”

“This one?” 

“Mando I know what everything does. It’s the _using them together_ part.”

“Run through the flight check again.” You huff but comply, easily talking through every step in the take-off procedures. You know he isn't keen on this, but you needed to prove to him you could do it. It can’t be easy for him either, you realize. This is his baby, as much as the kid is his kid. So you slow down, go through every detail until he’s satisfied. 

“Good,” is all he says when you’re through. “You can…” he hesitates, and you turn in the pilot’s chair to look up into the beskar. “When we leave you can do the flight check and get us off the ground. But this is enough for today.” He has a bounty has to hunt, and from the way he keeps shifting from one side of your chair to the other, he’s ready. You picture how great cats in the mountain peaks of Pamarthe slunk down mountainsides following prey; ruthless, and faithful that their body was designed for every movement it made. 

“Thank you,” you give him a small smile. 

He tilts the visor down at you, considering. It only took a few days to find out the best tool against the unforgiving stare is just to do it right back. “You’re welcome,” he replies.

* * *

_Today - three months after you’ve left Pamarthe_

You set down the Razor Crest with hardly a bump. It had taken some practice-and the enduring presence of a Mandalorian hunter-but you thought you could fly this thing blindfolded. He would definitely be mad if you did, but, you never know what could happen. You could go blind today from a plant’s pollen, or be squished by a log, or swallowed by a giant insect like the ones that exist in hives on Geonosis. You give your head a shake and disengage the engines, making sure everything is cooling before climbing down the ladder, treaded boots scraping every wrung. 

Mando is tucking rifle slugs into his boot-straps. He’s got the kid in one hand and one leg propped on the tiny fold-up table he uses to clean his weapons. You guess this is as close as he gets to domesticity, and it’s sweet in a way. You tuck your hands in your pockets and wait for him to turn and surrender the green child to you. He’s not happy and gives you a frown. You run a finger over his ear and he gurgles in a huff. 

Mando’s head tilts at the child, as if willing him to behave. Then he turns to you. “If you take the kid outside, take your blaster. The brush is heavy, anything could be out there.”

“All right.”

* * *

There are trillions of life forms according to the initial planet scan, but no structures, no cities, no flight towers. When you let the kid toddle down the hatch to the ground, you realize the life forms in question are insects. Trillions of them. 

They are everywhere. With a heavy heart you concede to the ancient adage: the universe _is_ considerably more hospitable to beetles.

The child loves it. 

He’s toddling around below the hatch catching beetles and eating them whole. You’d tried giving him dead ones earlier, but he wants them alive and flailing, and it takes all your willpower not to hurl at the sight of a wriggly little body trying to kick its way free. 

You sit with your knees bent upward, stabilizing your blaster to shoot beetles and wayward centipedes that try to get too friendly with the Crest’s ramp. The baby coos and squeaks every time one scurries away from you and into his waiting claws. You wrap a thin blanket you’d pilfered out of Mando’s sleeping-closet a little tighter around your shoulders and tuck your chin in. You hope you look as threatening to the beetles as they look to you, because it’s cold out here win the early day fog. 

This whole planet gives you the creeps. Every moment something new is moving, and you’re on high alert. The wind whips across long vines from above, and the ground seems to be endlessly moving. You sincerely hope it isn’t skin, or some enormous meniscus layer. _Please don’t be that, please don’t be that._

You aren’t really sure what time it is here. Mando had said the days here are much longer: almost fifty-two of your days back home, and according to the navigation system, the planet was on day thirteen of its revolution*, which makes it about dawn. Which isn’t helping you. You tip your head back and glare up through the tree canopy, willing the massive layer of clouds to dissipate. He’s only been gone a couple hours, and you don’t expect him back for at least another six. If the fob was to be believed, the quarry was close. And judging by the insect population, they weren’t going far from their mode of transportation. 

And neither are you. In fact, you’re ready to get the kid to nap after his free-range snack time and take a break from insects. It’s gross. They are nasty and have too many legs, and you think one squinted at you. They’re probably totally self-aware and plotting your demise. It’s unsettling, and you’re never coming back to this planet. 

“They’re gross,” you say, lifting a shoulder in a half shrug to the kid as you tuck him under your make-shift shawl. He’s only half-listening, one ear cocked behind him...and twitching. He tries to turn in your arms and you oblige, looking off in the direction his ears indicate. You know the two of you must look silly standing at the foot of the Razor Crest, two heads poking out, tilted, listening. But there isn’t anything to hear. The clicking noises of the kid’s beetles are gone. Even the ever-moving ground seems to have frozen, and none of the bushes you’d been eyeing warily shake anymore. 

Your skin prickles, and you hug the baby closer to your body while lifting your blaster out of your holster, enough to grip. You’ve been hiking on your home world enough to know that when the smaller animals scurry, you should too. Sure enough, there’s a huge sound way off to your left, like a huge animal breaking through the underbrush. It’s moving way too fast toward your landing site just as you flick the safety off on your blaster- 

-the Mandalorian flies face first out of the brush and into the ground. There’s a painful sounding clunk when his helmet knocks into a rock, and you open your mouth calling his name but he beats you there. 

“Come here!” he shouts, lifting himself from the ground to one knee. Your heart beats hard in your chest as the brush where he’s flung from keeps moving. A wet, gurgling groan erupts from the bushes. You shove your blaster into the drop-holster and tuck your arm under his shoulder thinking he’s wounded. He’s too quick and slips his arm around your waist instead and draws you tight against his torso just as a pair of huge, slimy, mandibles become visible. 

“What’s that? What are you-” you questioned.

“Hang on!” he yells. You don’t have a chance to dig your fingers into the cowl of his cloak before he takes you both airborne. Gasping in surprise, you bury your face into Mando’s shoulder and see a glimpse of yellow-striped legs before squeezing your eyes shut and flailing your legs at the sudden weightlessness. The kid is _fucking laughing._ Wind freezes along the back of your neck as Mando crushes you against him so he's flying parallel to the ground. You wrap an ankle around the back of his knee, torn between not wanting to off-center him and not wanting to die by falling. Your eyes are forced shut by grey and icy water needling into your skin as he flies higher into the stratus bank. You squeeze your eyes shut and pray whatever swear words are pouring out of your mouth don’t make it through the helmet’s audio system. 

Finally landing on a rocky outcrop far above the cloud line, all three of you sport sticky clothing from the fog. 

“What was chasing you?” you ask breathless, disentangling your legs and trying to find your footing. Mando doesn’t let you go until both feet are on the ground. 

“Biggest insect this side of the Mon Calamari system,” he says in exasperation. He reaches out and tugs the blanket you’ve got tangled around your arms up over your shoulders. It’s surprisingly still dry. “I found the bounty.” He pivots on his heel to look over the edge of the mesa he’s brought you too. “That beetle swallowed them.” 

“Stop. _Fuck_ , don’t tell me anything else,” you say firmly. You think he scoffs under the helmet from the breathy puff that makes its way through the filter. He clicks a couple buttons on his vambrace. You watch as he leans into one of his heels while pressing a complicated button pattern along the side of the helmet. A cooing breaks your hapless staring and you turn your attention to the kid. 

He still has all six of his little fingers. Adrenaline is coursing through your system, and you aren’t ready to put him down. Once your bearings are back you take in the view and...it’s breathtaking. What you thought was a never-ending haze was one of many cloud layers-and you’re parallel with the third one, full of staggering cloud formations. 

Sunlight like honey lazes across the sky and breaks apart heavy cumulus clouds you couldn’t see beneath the overcast layer. The sun has barely curled its rosy fingers over the horizon line; the once unnerving clicks and chirps and croaks rise steaming up the cliff face to your little ledge. Even the baby coos at the view. You set him around so he can see everything. Maybe he’s from a world like this, one full of squirmy frogs and ever moving landscapes. You press your nose into his soft head, and hope he finds it deep in his memory. You don’t hear the Mandalorian come to stand next to you. 

“Trip was a waste,” he grouches. The baritone of his voice clashes with your view. It’s devastating, and you curl two fingers into the kid’s hand, trying to hang onto this sliver of joy that will last you days, maybe months. 

“You’re wrong.” It’s ill-advised across the galaxy to talk back to anything that can kill you in five seconds or less. But he’s wrong, and if he wanted you dead he would have done it already. You’re still alive, and that’s the thought that pushes the rest of your sentence out. “He had a huge meal, and I got to see this view. Nothing like this exists where I’m from.” You stick your elbow out and poke him gently. “This has to beat deserts.” 

He shrugs. You know by now it’s a new maneuver on his part. He never shrugged the first two months you traveled with him. “Looks like a sunrise. Seen that before. Clouds. Trees.” He gestures toward the rising sun. “A star.” 

“What about that palette?” you gesture up at it. It’s euphoric, bacchanal. “Does that thing see color?” 

He takes a moment to consider your question. “It sees greyscale,” he answers. It tilts down toward you a bit, perhaps hesitant. But you’re not feeling fear today. You turn on your heel and walk to the other end of the ridge, and drop down cross-legged with the baby in your lap, facing the mountain ranges springing up far in the north. 

“Look at it,” you throw over your shoulder. 

“I am looking at it.” 

“Look at it. For real,” you repeat. You bring a hand up and cover your eyes. “No visor.”

It’s quiet for a long time. You take you blaster out of its holster and unscrew one of the metal end-caps on the stock to occupy the kid. He gurgles at the new shape and beeps happily inside your blanket cocoon. The landscape is all jungle except for other stony outcroppings shoving like molars through the dirt. 

Behind you, the hiss of a vacuum seal breaks your thoughts. Mando takes a long breath in through his nose behind you; it’s the first time you’ve ever heard him breathe, and red creeps up your cheeks. The sound of his lungs is secret and your whole body heats up from hearing it. You shove away all the raw thoughts his breathing alone calls into being. You’ve got to get it together, shove it in a sack, and bury it. Mandalorians are hunters and killers. You wonder if he’s feeling the sun touch his skin after so long in hyperspace. The breeze up here gusts and the baby’s ears twitch a little. You hope his father is letting it rush against his skin. 

This is what you wanted when you left that damned backwater vineyard with its union rules and constant overcast: a big sky molting orange. 

“All right,” he says suddenly, without the modulator. It’s warm as a hot spring. If it had texture it would drag rough across your skin. “It wasn’t all a waste.” 

“Told you,” you call back to him. Your shirt and pants are sticking to your body after flying through clouds. His boots scrape against the stone until you know he’s standing behind you...without his helmet on. You scrunch your eyebrows together with this information and almost forget not to turn around. “Does that mean you only ever see us in greyscale?” 

“Keep your eyes forward,” Mando says. He’s _right_ behind you. You stare straight ahead, glancing down at the baby who's occupied by the blaster end-cap. You wrap the blanket over his head so he’s ensconced. Just in case he decides to look up. But he’s totally occupied and doesn’t flinch when Mando’s helmet clunks down behind the both of you. You want to close your eyes 

You look into the sunrise and take a full-bodied inhale. It smells clean here, no exhaust fumes, no artificial fresheners, no pungent street stench. The jungle is healthy, full of fluffy-gilled mushrooms diligently eating away at the undergrowth and millions of bug carcasses littering the planet’s surface. You catch leather and gun oil waft past you and mingle with woodsiness. You jump a little and jostle the kid when a gloved hand nudges your collapsing bun off your neck, exposing your skin to the wind. He must be kneeling behind you. 

“You look...different in the sunlight,” he says simply. You duck your head down and feel him trace the top vertebrae of your spine with his gloved fingers before resting one large hand against the back of your neck. 

“Okay?” he asks. _Yes, yup, good,_ you think and realize he’s waiting for an answer. 

“Yeah, it’s okay,” you say, but keep looking down. If he keeps gently bandaging your thumbs and scooping you to safety from carnivorous insects while talking in that timbre you’re never going to overcome the niggling attraction that shoots up from your stomach every time he turns his direct attention to you. His gloved hand is warm on the back of your neck. You take a few breaths in and plant your hands on the stone surface and scoot back between his bent knees. His hands land on your shoulders to steady himself against you bumping into him, thumbs gently pressing into the crown of your spinal column. 

He starts to pull his hand away. "If it isn't-"

"I would tell you," you cut him off. He's a man of few words, never using them beyond a means, and if doesn't want to say anything he doesn't. Well...you're a woman of wants and a thousand words to tell them all if he'll listen. The hand returns, broad against your skin, exactly what you wanted after months in the cold beat of space. 

“Can we stay here for a while?” you ask. A weight bumps into the back of your head, and you feel his cool exhale against your hair. Is he looking at the dawn from exactly your perspective? What does day fourteen on this planet look like? Do the colors shift from lapis to cerulean on the other end of the sky? Mando doesn't answer. He sets his weight down and stretches his legs out around you, cocooning you between his knees. 

The child falls asleep in your lap with his fingers curled around his new toy. His puffy little breaths break the monotonous chirping. Clouds roll on, scooting along with the atmosphere and changing the shadows on the tree tops. You'd thought Mando's hands would fall away after a while, but they rest lightly at your shoulders. The cold tip of his nose against your scalp makes you yelp a little. 

“You’re freezing,” you mock whisper. He reaches around you with one hand and you lean to the right, closing your eyes tightly so he can look down at the kid bundled in his brown robes free of fear.

“He is...really green.” A bark of laughter erupts from you before you can clap a hand over your mouth, but it’s too late-just as the kid huffs Mando’s body heat is gone, he’s scraping the beskar helm away from you. The loss is instant, and you’re very aware of your wet clothes.

The baby looks up at you, disgruntled at being shook. You try to cover his inquisitive eyes, and he does not like it, reaching his little claws up to your fingers until you hear the helmet seal shut over the Mandalorian’s chin. 

“It’s okay,” Mando says through the modulator. “You can turn around. We should get back to the ship anyway.”

You clamber up, handing the baby to Mando so you can reattach your blaster parts. “You think it's gone?” You can still feel the electric tug of his fingertips against your spine. You’ll have to hang onto it for a while, because Maker knows he is frugal with his affection. 

“It probably left once it figured out there wasn’t any food.” He stretches one arm out and ends up having to crouch a few inches to pull you tight against his chest plate before stepping into the air. Your arm is tight around his neck as the sky streaks by underneath you, and this time you figured out where to hook your ankle. You whisper a goodbye to the otherworldly blue clouds above you.

* * *

The Crest is becoming consistently quiet when riding sub-light. It’s like cruising along on a light-rail. 

You’re overtired and need to sleep, yet trying to read your notes on the control dashboard in your soft sleep clothes. If you can figure out where all the electrical systems interact, maybe you’ll feel more confident doing a software upgrade to the navigation system. Mando’s been running the pre-Imperial map systems that presumably came with the ship, and it...it makes you want to swat him. Everyone knows pre-Empire maps are garbage; Alderaan is still on them, which means the asteroid field where Alderaan used to be isn’t navigable. You really don’t care if he wants to use old star charts...but you’d like the option of flying with a newer one. You try squeezing your eyes shut and opening them again. It’s useless. 

Mando slides down the ladder with a hard thump. “Your theory was wrong.”

“What theory?” 

He snaps his blaster open, inspecting the parts. “That you’d be flying us away from a predator with your new flight skills.”

You let the pad land on your chest. “I probably could have, if you’d run into the ship and not up into the air on a jetpack,” you say back. “Not sure why that was ‘plan a’.” When he doesn’t respond you rub the heel of your palm into your eye. 

“The creature would have damaged the hatch, it didn’t have wings, and you weren’t in the ship.”

It’s _unfair_ that he gets to be right about this. But you’d been flying the Crest successfully for months now, so even if your predator-savior theory didn’t work, you still had our flight skills. 

“You should sleep,” Mando rasps from somewhere behind you. You follow the sounds of his weaponry: ammunition belt, drop holster, vambraces. 

“So should you. A beetle almost ate you,” you respond softly back. Maker you want to fight. _Why_? “I draw the line at slicing beetles open to retrieve corpses.” You’re determined to be right about something. 

“You think a bug gets to kill me?” he asks, and your mouth turns up. Magnetic clip of pauldrons and armor plates. The ping of his chest plate. The soft fall of his flak vest, followed by the soft groan of pleasure from ditching layer, after layer, after layer. You’re tempted. Even if you turned your head a few degrees you’d see the stretch of his arms in his soft clothes...but you keep your eyes plastered to the blue-light screen, not willing to disturb this ritual. It’s too precious already that he chooses to remove the armor in front of you instead of after you’ve fallen asleep. You can be content to listen to the sounds of his body coming to rest. 

“I think I need to sleep,” you acquiesce and tuck the schematic into the storage crate you’ve been storing your belongings in. The ship goes quiet with the only domestic noises you know anymore. The tiny fresher clicks on and you listen privately to the shower run, to water splashing. The temperature in the hull rises maybe one degree. It's perfect. Just enough and no more. When he's done, there are quiet sounds of sleep clothes being pulled on. Mando rarely sleeps at the same time you do, but maybe today was unusual because...how often do people have to outrun insects you wonder. 

When the fresher light clicks off it’s the darkest you’ve ever seen the hull. You sit up to look around, trying to track him in the dark. You’ve been sleeping with the door cracked open. Maybe he forgot. “Hey,” you start, and nearly jump out of your skin when his knuckles nudge your shoulder. 

“Shift,” he orders. You scoot over until he’s settled on _your_ bedroll, taking up _your_ stretching space. His voice is low and tired, and oh so deep without the filter adjusting it. You scooch and roll over onto your side so your back is pressed against his arm. Even through his soft clothes you can tell his body is hot; a sharp contrast against your back. 

“This is,” you start, expecting your voice to reverberate in the dark, “nice, but what are you doing?” 

“A beetle almost ate me,” he states. “I set navigation to leave the system in a few hours for Nevarro. Now I’m sleeping next to a beautiful woman. Any objections to that?” 

“Hm,” you hum back, trying to think of a retort, but you’re tired, _exhausted_ from being on high alert all day _,_ and he offers many valid points why you don’t have an argument, mainly the proximity of his torso, and the offering of his bare voice. 

“Good,” he says, and slides his arm under your neck and up around your shoulder, pulling you against his long side. “Go to sleep.”

“Don’t need to be bossy,” you say back. After a few minutes of quiet, you turn over so your head is resting on his shoulder, and your body is crammed up against his torso. 

“Please go to sleep?” his voice is gentle, like he’s acquiescing to your reprimand. 

You tuck your head into the hollow of his shoulder. “Yes.” The fight drains out of you. 

“You’re brave,” he says a few minutes later. “But hypothetical scenarios hardly match reality. The goal is to stay alive, not make a skilled escape.”

The words are gently given, with one hand brushing hair off your shoulder unveiling skin touched by a dozen parent stars. Maybe you understand. He would have let you try your plan, it’s just he had a better understanding of the stakes. _I’m an idiot,_ you think. _How haven’t I realized my life is in danger every second I’m with him?_

You take a deep inhale of his shirt. 

He smells freshly cleaned, like soil and leather and earth. _There’s no way he just smells like this_ you think. _I couldn’t replicate this if I tried_ . You’re a geneticist. Your knowledge base is about how to mimic the natural order of things. But something tells you, no _everything_ tells you, you’d never make this in your greenhouse. 

“Mando?” you whisper.

He groans. 

“Promise me you won’t let a beetle eat me,” you say. He doesn’t say anything at first, just squeezes your shoulder and turns his head so you feel the warm end of his nose streak against your forehead. He takes a deep breath in. 

“Nothing’s promised, sweet girl,” he murmurs.

* * *

Later, in the fresher’s shower, you pick up his bar of soap and smell it. 

It’s unscented. 

You smile stupidly to yourself, and let the water run hot down your back for a few seconds more. 


	4. Chapter 4

_Yesterday_

“Is there something I can do to help?” he'd asked politely. 

“No,” you replied, refusing to look up. You've got your knees and elbows pulled in tight around you, the baby sitting comfortable in his crib beside you. "I got it." 

"I wasn't talking about the schematic," Mando says. Even without looking you can tell he's rocking back on one heel. It would be imperceptible to a quarry or anyone really, but you know his body language now, how he moves when he’s tired, when anticipation beats through him. Weight in the heels means he's tired. 

You're tired too. There's a nagging dryness along the roof of your mouth, you really needed to drink some water. 

"I know," you murmur. "I, um," you trail off, wanting to respond, but getting distracted by the problem you're facing with the wiring. This should be over here...but it's sealed off over there? That can't be. That adjoining cable doesn’t-

His voice calls you back to yourself, and you huff but look back at him. "Finish your thought?" 

Oh. "I don't want to talk about it right now," you say quietly. He jerks his helmet in a nod, but he has one fist opening and closing rhythmically. The sight of it sends ghost sensations against your neck, your breasts, your ribs.

"Do you…" he tried again. This time you turn your body a quarter way around the crate you’re sitting on, schematic hanging out of your fingers. He’s...stilted. Unsure. 

He asks, "do you plan on sleeping soon?" 

You stare into the visor’s t. The dryness on your lips irritates you, and you're tempted to break his gaze and rip at the dying flakes. Flicking your eyes to your bedroll, already made up, you answer. 

"I can't," you tell your pillow. "I need space." 

Hyperspace should gobble you up for saying that. 

"I understand," he says, and he sounds sad. "I'll be in the cockpit if you need me." He climbs up the ladder, and you only start breathing when you hear both door-sets close. You throw the schematic as hard as you can on your bed roll, cover your face, and cry.

* * *

_Fourteen days earlier_

The second night after the beetle incident, you thought Mando would go back to sleeping in his sleep-cell or in the cockpit. And as usual, you were wrong. You’d been shifted out of your slumber by a hand on your shoulder giving you a shake and him calling your name. 

“Are you sleeping?”

“I was,” you grumbled back. You opened your eyes and it’s pitch black which means the refresher light is off, which means his helmet is off, which means-

-you don’t know what it means. It’s new territory. You’re not yet used to the sound of his breathing or the way his body moves without armor, or how you fit next to it. 

“Scoot over,” he didn’t wait for you to respond, just pushed you until you rolled on your tummy toward the floor. 

“This is about the beetle isn’t it?” you guessed. You feel him put both hands on you and shove you over another inch. “Are you secretly afraid of bugs?” 

“The heating system is offline. Were you messing with the wiring today?” 

Your eyes popped open in the dark. You definitely put those junctions back wrong. “I’ll fix it tomorrow.”

“Good. You keep breaking things on my ship you’ll have to earn your keep another way,” he says. “Come here.”

With a dramatic groan you turned onto your side, then your back, and finally into Mando’s shoulder. He wrapped his arm around you just like the night before last, and pulled the blanket around you. Your nose pressed into the joining of his shoulder and collarbones; he smells like leather and wood, and the earthy scent that permeates all his clothes. The Mandalorian is a hurricane, and you’re gently being swept along in his eye to whatever individual he’s taking terror-or justice, depending on your point of view-to next. The line of his nose swept across your forehead, and chapped lips pressed above your hairline. You’re lifted with every rise of his chest. 

The next night you tucked your hand underneath the one that rests over his sternum, and he curled his fingers over yours. And the next he woke you because you’re rolled onto your side instead of into his.

“Come here,” he told you. He’s already got a hand on your shoulder and is ready to roll you over. 

“ _You_ come here,” you grumbled back. “You woke me up.” 

“I didn’t take you for a complainer,” he said, but you felt his body curl around yours nevertheless, and a sigh of pleasure leaves your throat at how warm he is enveloping your back, your knees. His arm falls around you and for the whole night, you’re the safest you’ve ever been while hurtling past the speed of light.

* * *

_Five days ago_

You dream of a cave mouth collapsing, of beating stones with your fists in the lumbering dark, of an empty satchel. You dream creatures squat behind you. 

You woke up smelling putrid fumes of metal being fried by a welding spanner, and your stomach lurches. The hatch is open. On shaking legs you make it down by the fresher’s barely there light. Your stomach is roiling, every passing second your jaw goes numb.

You stumble into the muddy terrain of this solar system's second moon, and hear Mando calling your name as you sink to both knees and heave up everything in your stomach. Your breathing is embarrassing, going higher and higher pitched with every inhale. Mando is there, pulling your hair away from your slack mouth. 

He’s been doing a quick repair on an engine boot outside the ship, and it stinks of fuel lines. 

There’s nothing left in your stomach. Your throat curls in on itself and forces up bile.

* * *

_Seven days ago_

This planet is covered with rain clouds, with lightning storms you can see from outside the atmosphere. 

“I’ll take it from here,” Mando says, landing a hand on the back of the seat. You surrendered the pilot seat to him for the co-pilot’s chair instead. The kid is sleeping soundly in his cradle down in the hold. It’s a rare moment where you’re both distraction free, and for a sweet moment you debate sliding your fingers- 

“The storm never dissipates. The inhabitants live underground in a thermal cave series, so we’ll land top-side and have to trek inward.” You hum in response, distracted by the purple blue haze beneath the stratosphere. A soft weight lands on your knee. 

“Hey,” Mando calls. He’s swiveled around, the autopilot light blinks pleasantly. You’re still getting used to his direct attention, and his hand on your knee is grounding. “Do you still want to do the supply run by yourself?” 

You perk up. “Can I still?” 

His shoulders stiffen a little, and he pulls his hand back to sit up straight. “Yes. The tunnels should be safe. Stay in the market sector, and meet me at the transit hub. You should take the kid with you.” He’s getting used to you taking on more responsibility, and you can tell it's hard for him by the way his body tenses at the mention of you leaving the safety of his side. You’ve been here for months though, he’s got to let you learn to handle yourself. 

He barters with the hangar attendant in the rain while you and the kid watch from the mouth of the ship. The downpour is torrential, and you do your best to arrange the child so his ears are under your coat’s cover. A deal is struck and Mando jerks his head for you to follow, and together you walk briskly through the onslaught to a gaping cave mouth with lanterns hammered into the sides. The wiring looks...frayed. If any water got in it would short the whole system for sure. 

“Don’t worry,” Mando’s voice echoes. “This structure has stood for generations. Hasn’t leaked yet.” You nod, but fall in step a little closer to him...just in case the lights do go out.

* * *

Below the mountain there are many more people, and many more rickety light hook-ups. But the humans here move around easily, greeting one another in front of stalls and carrying recycled crates full of white and purple vegetables on their hips. One woman about your age whispers in her friend’s ear and they giggle together behind their hair. You aren’t sure if it’s from the baby who is poking his ears out and looking around enthusiastically, or the Mandalorian at your side. You sneak an upward glance at him. He sticks out sharp and broad against the soft flowing clothes of these cave dwellers. You’re really not sure why you’re bothered by it. In one hour you’ll be back on the Razor Crest and he’ll curl up against your back in the dark. 

“Meet me back here in one hour,” he says. 

“Copy that,” you tell him. You tuck your thumb in your coat pocket to feel the credits he’d doled out earlier, mentally counting by the shape they were all there. He presses his palm against your shoulder quickly and looks down at the kid. 

“Mind yourself. No complaining.” The kid snorts, but Mando’s already walking down the lowest-lit tunnel to the mechanic sector

“What first? Fruit or meat?” He beeps happily up at you.

You buy a finger-length cut of jerky from a kind-eyed vendor and give it to the kid in distraction. Every place you stop, someone coos at him. 

“What’s its name?” a young boy asks. He’s leaning far from his mother trying to see your little companion. 

“I don’t know. He can’t speak,” you say kindly. The little boy lets out a whine and lets his mother pull him away. 

It’s so warm down here. You don’t see any piping along the walls or floors, so all the heat must be produced by thermal pools deep, deep in the caves. The thought is humbling, to know you’re kept alive by something primordial. 

Your chronometer says it’s been forty minutes. “Damn it, time to go buddy,” you say to your bag of green. The crowd’s thickened, and you’re pushing your way through calling out apologies and shielding the kid. Your wrist catches on someone's holster and you jump back from the metal touch. 

“I’m so sorry-” 

You yelp-the vibroblade is shiny. You could see your eyelashes in it, and more important the Twi’lek male with bright white eyes brandishing it.

“You’re not mindin’ your walkin’ very much, girlie,” the Twi’lek spat out. The edge pressed against your cheekbone. If flicked on, you realized your skin would be shredded. “Looked like you were trying to take my blaster.” A little circle widens around you. Behind the Twi’lek you could see the two girls from earlier, still whispering to one another, and you suddenly miss Anijae with all your heart. 

“It was an accident,” you said evenly. You shifted your feet, trying to stand steady against the knife, and slip one hand into the pouch with the kid. The Twi’ takes a step closer to you, poking his elbow out, opening a clear shot to hit his ribs. “I meant no harm.”

He gargles and spits directly on your cheek, and draws an shocked gasp from the crowd. You clench your jaw. 

“My Rodian friend here,” the man cocks his head at a sickly angle to a Rodian with a gun on each hip, “thinks you ought to compensate me,” he punctuates it by pressing the blade flat into your cheek some more, and you breath in sharply because it’s dangerously close to your eye. 

“You want credits?” you say. Your hands are shaking but you dig the sack of credits Mando had given you and toss them away from all your feet. “Take it, they’re yours.” You’re trying to think quickly. If the blade comes on, he’ll shred you. You could try to land a punch but it would be a risk. Mando had said the goal was to live, not show off. _Just stay alive, nothing you’re holding is more valuable than your lives._

“That’s a good start, for the inconvenience you’ve caused me,” the Twi’s breath is rancid. When he opens his mouth to snarl you see greying, rotten molars against his red gums. The baby wraps his fingers around two of yours. No one here is armed, you don't have a blaster, Mando is gone- “But my blue friend here is lonely, and you’re so _plush_.” He shoves you back and there’s a blue body that smells like sewer and making nasal sounds you can’t understand-

-the kid squeezes your fingers, and you before you can squeeze back-

People scream and duck as blaster fire rings out. The Twi’s vibroblade falls against your face and bounces, bounces down your body and lands stuck down in the dirt, and he lies next to it, smoking. The body of the Rodian is smoking too, but it’s-headless. 

You cover your mouth and force air in your nose, releasing the kids hand so you don’t crush him. Murmurs erupt that she killed them, slayed them, _beheaded_ them. Those two girls...you can see them again and they are whispering to one another, and when you follow their eyes-

“Mando?” your voice is clearer than you expected. 

He doesn’t answer, but the crowd parts like water for him. People back away and hold their children and groceries close to their stomachs as he steps out, blaster drawn. _He killed them, he slayed them, he beheaded them._ No one says a word when he collects the credit pouches off the corpses along with the one you’d tossed away. Without stopping he plants a hand on your back and makes you start walking...but not before the hot smell of iron fills your nostrils.

* * *

He’s moving fast, you’re breathing hard to keep up with his long strides so he doesn't have to push you along. The kid lets out a whine that echoes in the great tunnel. The only sounds are your mingled footsteps and breathing. You want to ask him how he found you, how he knew. 

You’re going to melt into his side and cry later. You fix your eyes on the cave’s maw, it’s just barely brighter than inside where the flimsy wired lamps...flicker. 

Mando freezes. All you can hear is your own labored breaths. 

“Show yourself,” he calls out, turning to look down the cave. You keep your eyes planted on the mouth, ready to run if he shoves you. You look at him in your peripheral. His feet are planted, but his stance is almost lazy. His tone is barely threatening. That means...he’s giving them a chance to run. 

Bodies peel off the cave walls. Sweat and grease reach your nose. You think back hard. He’d gone to the mechanic sector, and the Twi’lek had stunk of soured fuel-

“You think you hunters can come in here,” one steps forward, eyes shielded with welding goggles and a ramshackle pulse-rifle at his shoulder, “and kill my mechanics?” You do a quarter turn, making sure to keep your body between the rifle and the baby. You swallow, your heart beat thumps down to your wrists. 

“Your mechanics got what they deserved,” he drawls. Lightning strikes down outside, sending an electric jolt through the copper wiring, and illuminating the beskar. Thunder reverberates off the cave walls and vibrates through your feet. 

“That’s not for you to decide!” Desperation drips out of his voice. His anger is palpable, from the rolling grunts of cronies following him. “You’ll face the magistrate, Mandalorian.”

“Let us pass.” Your heart speeds up. This doesn’t end without a shootout. Without more bodies. 

“You’ll have to shoot through us all!” You close your eyes. 

The gauntlets thrown, and their lives are forfeit. 

The Mandalorian draws and shoots out the closest lantern. Your suspicion was right. It’s a loop system, and the tunnel goes dark. You drop to the ground, cradling the child against your chest as blaster fire and screams and smoke are summoned into existence. It’s over in seconds but you can’t move, too afraid Mando was one of those screams. 

A hand hooks into your elbow, but when you try to shove them away you meet beskar. You pull in a difficult breath, and let him pull you to your feet. 

“Watch your step,” he says, after your foot brushes...he can see thermals. He can see all the corpses.

* * *

At the mouth of the cave, Mando wraps his whole arm around your waist and sets a fast pace to the Razor Crest, blaster still drawn. The attendant says something unintelligible to him, and waves frantically, _cowering_ , when Mando tries to give him some of the money he’d collected. But the Mandalorian doesn’t question it. He holsters his side-arm, guides you up the ramp, and doesn’t let you stop moving until you’re seated on his cot and he’s taken the child from you. 

You hoped he wasn’t leaving the atmosphere too quickly, you think vaguely. You’d wanted to see the storm one more time. You lay back in his closet letting your legs hang out. The engines roar to life. 

“Sit up,” you hear him say. One of his hands rests warm on your thigh, the other holds a med kit. You obey. 

“I don’t need a medkit,” you say. 

“I need to look-”

“I don’t need it!” you shout. You can hear the buzzing from the hyperdrive and your own labored breaths. He stands still in front of you. Waiting. “I don’t...” your voice is thick. “You killed all of them.” 

He’s not going to let you escape this. He opens the medkit and lays it on your knees. 

“Yes.”

When he brings his hand up to sanitize your cheeks, you pull back, and that’s enough to break him. The quiet he’s trying to foster turns into blood red frustration-you inhale sharply as he grips your jawbone, turning your head up to look into the visor. 

“No one,” he grates out, “fucks with the kid, or with you.” 

_Maker_ you want to curl up naked in that kind of surety, that kind of safety only offered from being bound to an apex predator-but the thought of him killing a dozen life forms for you is...numbing. When he’d hired you on he’d said this job wasn’t safe for little ones. You’re dried up. And feeling like a little one.

He slipped into your bedroll as you were falling asleep. When you’d finally let him-after tears, and gloveless coaxing, and promises of a good rest-he’d cleaned along your cheeks, ever gentle, and made you take a shower while he cared for the child. You’d scrubbed your skin with his soap, your soap, letting the water run over every nook and crevice and burn your scalp. The smells...you’re getting rid of them. If you have to roll in sand forever you’re getting rid of them. 

Tonight he didn’t nudge you or ask if you were awake. He slowly wound his body around yours-

-the first blast of hot air over your ear sends you sitting upright, your heart pounds in your chest. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks, voice low. His fingers are caught in the crevice of your hip. 

“I need a second,” you whisper. His breathing has never bothered you before. 

“What do you need?” he squeezes your hip a little. You wonder maybe if that is what you need. 

“Can you hold me?” you ask instead. His palm spreads over the top of your thigh.

“Come here.”

* * *

_Nine days ago_

Mando had been gone for a week after a quarry. They’d ran for days, and put up a fight and he had puffy bruises inside his biceps and close to his collarbones. You’d seen it when he was applying bacta under his cowl, and brushed you away when you’d tried to look at it. 

“Will you let me look at it tomorrow?” you’d asked in the dark before his body had even settled on the floor. You thought he’d take the night to sleep in his cot, or the cockpit, somewhere he’s used to. He aches, you can tell. He’s favoring his left shoulder, and when he lands with a grunt on his back he lies for an extra long minute until there’s the sound of bones shifting back where they should be. The noises he makes are _obscene,_ and you’re wide awake by the time he turns over and curls around you. His body inflates but he only huffs behind you. 

“Injury management is my job,” he says, and...leaves it at that. You poke your elbow back against his ribs. “What?” he grouses. It’s contrasted by the way he’s tucking his nose under your ear and nudging it. His honed negotiation techniques _won’t_ work, they _won’t_.

“Just tell me it isn’t infected.” You’ll be damned if you have to take care of the green goblin alone. Even...if it is why you’re here in the first place. But he likes his father more, and after witnessing him using his powers for mischief, it’s better if Mando stays whole. 

“Go to sleep,” his voice is low. You try, you do. You close your eyes and try to breathe naturally and try to sync your lungs to his. He has collapsed over you. 

“Mando?” 

“Can this wait?” he’s grumpy. 

“I don’t think so.” 

He sighs. “All right.”

“Why do you sleep down here?” 

You think he might have fallen asleep, but he eventually answers with a question. “Do you want me to sleep somewhere else?”

“No.” You answer too fast. You’re both silent for a bit. The ship’s systems fill up the void. 

“You’re the warmest thing I touch all day. My armor is...it’s either freezing or burning up,” he muses quietly. “Something to look forward to.” He nudges your hair away from your neck with his fingertips. “You always smell good.”

You snort at that. “I’m sweaty all the time.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s...drowsy. Amber, mixed with something.” You try to imagine him younger smelling amber perfume at a shop stall in his full cuirass. Before his body ached all the time. Before he leaned back on his left heel when he was tired. 

“I like you sleeping here,” you say, shuffling back against his chest more. He groans and clamps his hand on your shoulder when you back your hips up into his. 

“You need to be careful,” he warns. He’s talking about hardness pressing against the base of your spine. You’ve been noticing it ever since he took to sleeping beside you, and wrote it off as biology, and promised yourself to be careful moving around. 

You’re not interested in being careful today. 

You separate, flip over so you can look at where his face should be. “I think you smell good. Like…” you trail off, and try to find his hair in front of you. He shudders hard when you press your palm against his cheek, and it makes something behind your belly burn when he turns his mouth and plants a kiss against your thumb, against the blister scabs he swats your prying nails away from daily. “Clean, like after rain.”

“You can’t say that to me,” he whispers and his voice is steady despite how he’s _vibrating_. He’s alone under the armor. He’s separated from all things, wind, sunlight, the hot bowls of food you leave for him on the dashboard. You only get this privilege because of this little pocket of the galaxy he’s hidden for himself and is willing to share with you. “You already carry my kid around on your hip like he’s yours. I’m only a man.”

“You’re a Mandalorian.” You’ve got a once ounce reserve of bravery, and you use it all to press forward until your lips find him in the dark. He groans deep from his chest when you press your mouth to his, your hand sliding against his pectoral. His lips are dry, because he never drinks any water like you tell him to, but they’re his. “If you can’t bear it anymore, I’m here.”

“ _C_ _ome here_.” He kisses you with fervor as his hand glides over your clavicle and clutches into your hair. You dig your fingertips into his arm to urge him on. Not that he needs it as he pulls the thigh you’d thrown over his knee tighter, making a new shape with your body. You sweep your tongue into his mouth and he pushes off the deck to roll you to your back. 

“Wait-” You hear the tremor in your voice, and he growls when you interrupt him, but peppers kisses onto your throat. “Carrying the kid on my hip turns you on? I do that every day.” He tugs your leg up by the back of your thigh and grinds into you, drawing a long gasp out of you, making your eyes roll back. 

“I know you do,“ he says, and keeps a grinding roll going. You don’t know who taught him this, and you’re not going to ask, but you’re so, _so_ grateful to them. “I walk around hard every day. And when you talk to him while you work, I-” You’re pent up, he’s got his hands on your stomach and cradling your head and Maker you need him touching you everywhere _now_. "Take off your clothes.” 

You answer, “Yes,” and sit up to tug your top off. Goosebumps break out over your exposed skin, but when his hands find you in the dark and pull you atop him on the floor of the Crest, all thoughts of temperature fall away. 

Soft clothes fall to the wayside. He sucks your thumb into his mouth when you try to learn the shape of his jaw. You might sob at how good he feels underneath you, stretching your thighs open as you fight his heavy hands on your thighs to rub yourself against his cock. This should be a delicate thing, but you’re needy, and he’s been so patient. You reach a hand into his trousers and wrap your palm around his cock, and he jumps underneath you, hand flying to your wrist. 

“I want you now,” he grinds out. 

“How?” 

“Lie down,” he presses the words into your lips, and you comply, sliding off of him, let him press your thighs open while he squeezes your breast, makes your spine learn a new trick, licks into your mouth. He heads down, down, biting into the flesh around your stomach to leave marks, oh you need him to leave proof he was there. 

“Please hurry-” you suck in a sharp breath when he licks into you and closes his mouth over your clit, drawing a high pitched whine out of you. 

“Quiet,” he admonishes, and tenderly pushes two fingers inside your wet center. You want to scream. He takes his mouth away for a moment and that’s worse. “Now she’s a complainer,” he says into your thigh. His cheek’s scrape is pressing into the soft skin inside your legs while his fingers force your tight flesh to give way over, over, over again. He hooks one broad hand around your leg and draws it up to rest over his shoulder. He leans in to prod carefully at your clit only at his pleasure, and your hips twitch upward as you realize this is for _him._

“Only,” you pant out while gripping the blanket beneath you, “because I thought you were going to fuck me.”

He presses his fingers into you, hard, and your mouth opens to beg. 

“I am going to fuck you,” he says to your juncture where your thigh meets your hip. “It isn't going to be slow-” something primal unlocks in your skull sending tingles down your spine “-but this time,” his fingers ease out of you and rubs your clit, your hips arch up at the building sensation, in desperate presentation. “I just want to feel you.” He returns his fingers to your aching core and brings his tongue to your clit, and you burn up underneath him. 

He finally sits you astride his hips, knees bent, and swallows every sound you make as your body stretches around his hard length. You cry out when he twitches upward, nudging something long untouched inside you, and he crushes your mouth against his, desperate to keep the child from waking. 

“Can you be quiet?” he pants. 

“Yes,” you gasp, hands balled in the blanket and spread over his shoulder. He presses his fingertips against your lip and you nip at them, but lick them all the same. 

“Set the pace,” he offers, in denial to the way his fingers dig your hips. It’s the only thing he’ll offer you. You roll your hips forward and back, enjoying the luxurious sinking of him into you, knowing there’s more to come. The thought makes your stomach clench, and you run your nails down his chest eliciting a rich moan. Every time you roll back you bite your lip, your chest glows red from the noises he makes beneath you, the clench of his abdominal muscles, how his ribcage quivers when you tip forward and speed up. 

“Can I touch myself?” You’re already sliding one hand between you, to toy with the juncture of your bodies, and he curses as your fingers glide against his slick cock. 

“Yes,” he says, and it’s delicious. You stop moving and just rub yourself with him inside you, leaning over him, savoring the fullness of his cock within you. He curses so loud into the vacancy between atoms, and it clicks that he is a danger you should be afraid of. You move again, plant your hands beside his head, and kiss him until his blunted nails dig into your back, swears in a language you can’t understand, and presses his hips up into you until you sob from the pressure. He rolls upward a handful of times, drawing out his pleasure and settles against the hull floor satisfied. 

“How are you going to fuck me?” you ask him, sitting up daintily with him inside you. 

His fingertips find his cum leaking between your bodies, and he takes a shaky breath. 

“On your back,” he rasps. He paints your bottom lip with the wetness on his forefinger. “For as long as I want.”

* * *

_Yesterday_

Mando is asleep in the cockpit. You heard him close the hatches between you and leave you to be alone and even though you’re the one who sent him away, it makes your chest hurt. 

Why is this bothering you now? You knew he hunted for a living, killed people, maimed them sometimes-so why was witnessing it upsetting? That’s his job. Always has been. You’re irritated with yourself.

You’ve been rocking the baby in time with the gentle sways of the ship moving sub-light to the Nevarro system. You aren’t sure why you aren’t travelling with the hyperdrive. Maybe he’s trying to give you time? You’re not sure it’s helping. He shouldn’t be adjusting his methods to accomodate you, _you_ were the help, the assistance, _you_ should be adjusting to _him-_

You look down at the child, happily wrapped in his robes and the extra blanket you’d been swaddling him in on nights the heating system conks out. You’d fixed those junctures. You’d updated your in-progress manual and everything. It must be a faulty part. You’ll have to dig in the guts next time you’re landed for a quarry. Meanwhile, you’re all bundling up separately. His nose twitches in a dream, and his eyes flutter behind eyelids. You stroke down one floppy ear the way Mando does when he comes home to the Crest after a hunt, and the child’s eyes settle. 

The affection at the easy companionship you’ve built over the months seems overcast. You’re trying to reconcile the hunter who killed indiscriminately to the hunter who wrapped his fingers around your throat and whispered filthy things against your mouth while driving into your still seeping pussy in the dark. A tiny voice whispers _protector_ behind your eyes, and your stomach clenches like a traitor _._

Maybe you’re still in shock. Maybe you’re angry you couldn’t defend yourself. 

Hot tears spring to your eyes. You didn’t do anything. You didn’t take the liver shot, you didn’t kick the Twi’lek’s shins, you didn’t run your elbows into the Rodian’s soft multi-chambered stomach. You froze, and Mando had to come save you. Guilt. If you had been more-

 _No_ , you shout. Even if you had been able to get away from them, Mando still would have doled out consequences. Nobody fucks with the kid. And nobody fucks with you. 

You know this galaxy is too big for you to be afraid. You close your eyes and promise to yourself, to the baby in your arms, to forebear for a while, and let the guilt pass in its time. Meanwhile you’ve lost something. You have work to do.

* * *

_Today_

“Mando,” you call up the ladder. 

“What do you need?” he responds. You can hear the familiar clicks of his blaster cleaning regime. _Frame, barrel, chamber, magnetic cartridge._ His voice is filtered, which means the helmet is on. You climb up. 

He doesn’t swivel around when you tap on the cockpit door. Just as well. You take a deep breath and stand by the chair. 

“I trust your decisions,” you tell him. He stops what he’s doing and swivels just enough to tip his helmet up at you. You guess he’s pulling his brow together. 

“I don’t understand,” he begins. But you dip your head, and use whatever bravery is left in you. 

“Please sleep next to me tonight.” 

This is your olive branch. 

“I like when you’re there. I feel safe.” He hasn’t moved. You can’t even hear him breathing. “I...don’t want to be scared.”

It’s a high confession for you, not given lightly. The Mandalorian tugs you close by one wrist into the v-of his knees, and brings both sets of your fingertips to the cool beskar, right where his mouth would be. It’s the only way he’ll ever kiss you in starlight. 

“I would be honored,” he says, and you imagine his eyes are closed, reverent. 

“This doesn't mean I want to talk about what happened on the planet,” you tell him softly. He pulls you even closer, places your hands on the edge of his chest plate and rests his gloved hands on top of your hips. 

“I frightened you,” he states. You don’t break your gaze into the helmet. “You still want me in your bed?” 

“Yes.” 

He takes a deep inhale, pressing his thumbs into your hip bones. “Sweet girl.”


	5. Chapter 5

_Yesterday_

You can do it. 

You can walk off this ship, and into town, and buy the medical supplies you need. 

You take a deep breath. Rest a hand on your blaster strapped on your thigh. There are credits in your pocket. 

One step off the ramp, and you can see people milling aimlessly around the city trellis gate, and you promptly walk back inside. 

You run your hands over your face, pat your cheeks, and breathe in. “It’s right there,” you try to reason with yourself. “It will take ten minutes tops.” 

You try a different tact. “The Mandalorian is counting on you. The child is counting on you. You are responsible, and can do this.” You turn back to look down the hatch. It smells like smoke and ash and nothing out there, which is better than cold, wet, and tang. 

You tip your head back and groan. Maker, why is this so hard? Mando gave you one job today: go buy bacta and medical supplies. You’re about to spend weeks following a lead for the child’s kind and you don’t know where it will be safe to stop next. He’d only parked here to visit Karga and the marshal to strategize a best route. Karga knows people, and Dune had spent an inordinate amount of time planet-hopping. 

All you had to do is walk one hundred yards into the city, find the general store, and exchange money for goods. 

You try again. You make it three steps off the ship before backing up and deciding to check your blaster, just one more time.

* * *

“Hey marshal,” Karga calls from the window. “Pay up. She just went back up the ramp.”

“Damn it,” she grumbles but slaps a Mon Calamari piece on the desk. “New bet.”

“You’re on,” Karga says, whipping around to point at her. The baby gurgles up at him for all the jostling. “She leaves in thirty minutes or less. One hundred credits. Mythrol, you want in?”

“Pass,” the blue-gilled creature calls. He’d been sullen since the hunter walked in. He kept flicking his eyes curiously between the magistrate, marshal, and Mandalorian.

“I’m in.” Dune expands the holo-map. “This asteroid field is tidal locked between this gas giant’s outermost ring and the nearest moon.”

“So it’ll be bumpy,” Mando replies. He glances out the window, following where Karga and the baby watch from. This is getting ridiculous. 

“Oh, I see a toe-no, back inside,” Karga looks down at the curious kid. “At this rate, I’ll be _rich_.”

“Seems pretty jumpy, Mando. You sure you don’t want some extra help?” Dune asks. The story of the mugging didn’t sit right with Cara. She suspected it wasn’t random. A young unknown woman, virtually impossible to track without recon-there were easier targets in those tunnels. But that was Cara’s job, and Mando appreciated her insight. 

“I’m certain,” he responds. Cara doesn’t know if he ever looks at anyone ever, but she thinks he’s meeting her eyes this time. “She was spooked.”

“Not the safest person to bring on a high stakes flight. But if you’re sure.” Care set the map to track a safe path through the next sector. 

“I’m afraid I have to agree with Marshal Dune, Mando,” Karga calls. He props an arm against the window and turns in toward the musty office. “You don’t want someone who can’t handle themselves in the outer rim. Leave her and child here while you hunt. We could keep her busy. People here are eager to farm, and a botanist could be beneficial.” 

“No,” Mando says and plugs the data stick into the terminal, gathering the map and flight plan. “I need her to watch the kid while I hunt. I can’t carry him in a satchel everywhere.” He minimizes the map and examines the navigation lines. 

“It’s your call,” Cara starts, drawing his gaze. “But if you need assistance, send a transmission.” 

“I appreciate that.” And he does. Cara is one of the few people he’d walk into a battle with willingly. Or ask for help from. “I’m all done here.” But he doesn’t leave.

“Can I walk you to your ship?” Karga calls. 

“Not yet,” Mando goes to stand by the window with the kid and his unpredicted friend. “Any movement?” 

“I think she just kicked the hull,” Karga muses. “She understands it’s safe out here, right?”

Mando lifts his shoulders and lets out a noise Cara would call exasperated. Behind him, Cara raises her eyebrows at Mythrol, who keeps staring at Mando. _Curious_ , Cara thinks.

* * *

_Four days ago_

“Argh!” you yell out angrily, dropping the welding spanner into the mud. “Son of a-” you mumble the last part because the kid is staring up at you, ears drooping, the gecko he’s caught squirms in his hands, and takes its chance to wriggle free and race into the bushes. Betrayal is written all over his little face. 

“I’m sorry, buddy,” you say to him. Your foot really does hurt though. Taking a ginger step, you kneel down where he’s standing, staring longingly after his prize. You pat him on the back, apologizing. 

It was the fourth time this solar cycle you’d dropped something on a body part. First it was the crates with the durasteel-reinforced corners falling out of the overhead storage onto your thighs and shins. Then your blaster. Then an egg. 

The egg you wouldn’t have minded so much. Except Mando had watched you do it, and the buckethead had turned his helm away conspicuously. You know the baby can’t see through the beskar, but his attunement to the Mandalorian’s moods was...startling. 

Now the spanner on your foot. You don’t know what’s going on with you but repairs have been difficult the past month. Not because you can’t do it. It’s just...you’re turned off to it. You suspect it’s the smell of the fuel lines. You’re working hard to move past it and accept that everywhere you go, the smell will be with you-it’s part of living aboard aircraft. But this is your project, and you promised you would finish, and you’ll be damned if one bad memory keeps you from making sure this rickety sack of wires flies properly. You’ve got your blaster strapped to your leg. Between that, a heavy welding gun, and a kid who can use the force, you’re safe. 

“Let’s go find another one,” you say to the kid. He looks up at you, joy on his face, and reaches his arms up. You lift him to your chest and let his ears guide your way through the soft brush. He turns this way and that, and you finally set him down at a little bubbling headwater no more than a meter wide, which he puts his hands in, hoping for worms. 

You sit in the dirt and take your boot off to examine your foot. There are broken blood vessels under the skin, and you'll have a nasty bruise to match the one on your thigh and shin from the crates. _Three for three_ , you muse. You take the other boot off and join the kid, dipping your toes in the water. You'd discovered a few days earlier while walking around barefoot how delighted he is with the existence of toes, and he beeps happily, one hand on your pinky toe and one digging for crawlers. 

This place is beautiful. A mid-rim planet referenced as mid-rim-Naboo. Your pre-Empire maps says it was a tourist destination for those that couldn't afford Naboo. Now it's an agricultural trade hub. You'd seen the enormous circular crop fields in different stages of growth on the journey to the uninhabited side. It must be fantastic to work with that soil all day. You'd love a sample and a chem-kit to analyze what they were using to get the plants to grow in various stages while maintaining fertility. 

You need a houseplant. 

"I need a houseplant," you say to the kid. He turns to look at you curiously. "Something that doesn't need sunlight." He babbles and goes back to his worm hunt. 

You walk with him along the widening creek for a couple hours, playing and searching for small friends. It's the quietest day you have had in a long time, but you've left the Razor Crest with part of an engine open. There will be a little more to do. This is a good break for you. The ship is in sight, and you don’t need to glance over your shoulder every few moments. It’s the first time you’d gone further than one hundred yards from the ship, but you’d do anything to keep the kid’s smile on his face.

When he's tuckered out and refuses to walk anymore, you cradle him at your shoulder and listen to his puffy breaths while walking back to the headwater for your boots. 

They're gone. 

Your breath hitches, and you run through the list of possibilities that aren’t life-threatening. Maybe someone just walked by and stole them, maybe an animal thought they were food, maybe-

"Looking for these?" A drawl calls out from behind you. You whip around.

"Where are you?" 

"Over here." You turn back around and on the other side of the three-foot pond is the Mandalorian, with your boots. He's in his full cuirass, no rifle. His hunt here is finished. 

"Can I have them back?" You reach an arm out across the water, but he draws the shoes back. Hm. "Come on," you try again. He doesn't move. 

"I came back to the ship and found an engine torn open, and the kid was gone. Your holster and blaster were gone too." He takes the long way around the pond even though he could easily step over. You stand your ground, stare up into his visor. 

“Were you worried?” you ask. He’s been worried. He doesn’t say it, but he takes extra time to land in wide clearings. Places you could see every threat from. 

He doesn’t stop moving until he’s directly in front of you, looking down into your face. He’s a whole head above you, and you have to tip your chin up to keep staring. 

“At first,” he answers simply. He reaches forward and pets down the kids head. He’s sound asleep, and doesn’t stir. “I found the tracks and the pond. I knew you wouldn’t go far.” 

“You sound sure of yourself,” you say. But he tilts his head to the side, considering you. He steps forward, crowding into you so you feel his body heat seeping into the air, not quite touching you. Your cheeks heat up. Something runs warm through your veins and into your lungs.

“I’m sure I promised you something when I got back,” he reaches forward and slides the back of one gloved finger inside your wrist and you nearly jump out of your skin. Goosebumps creep up your arms. He’s good. You’ll give him that. You let your wrist fall forward trying to catch his hand but he's already pulling away-

-and taking the kid from you to cradle himself, and walking back to the Crest. 

Your eyes widen. You let the air you’re holding in your lungs out slowly, look at the triplet moons beginning their march, and consider promising them your soul if he’ll come back and take your clothes off underneath them.

* * *

Together, you finish the repair you’d been doing. He’s handier with the outer mechanisms, it’s his ship after all - you’re still not sure you believe his story that he put it back together after it was scrapped by Jawas - so it’s only a few hours later you’re sealing up the engine barrel. 

“Gah-damn it!” you hiss. The heavy duty pliers you’d been using to hold the metal in place while bolting it back in fall out of your grip and directly onto your already bruised foot. “Ow,” you whisper into your hand. That does it. A lump forms in the back of your throat, the tears come before you can stop them. 

“You okay?” Mando asks. He’s somewhere behind you, but you just shake your head and let yourself cry a little. His hand is gentle on your back, comforting, and you know you shouldn’t be embarrassed crying over this. It’s just you were doing so well keeping it together, and now…

“I’m sorry,” you whisper. Your voice doesn’t sound like you. You jam one palm into your eye and try to scrape away the tears but you’re making your eyes redder. 

“They’re just pliers,” he says back. You shake your head because he doesn’t get it. 

“No, I mean, I’m sorry you’re...having to clean up messes I start. I should have finished this forever ago. And then you had to come find me,” you take a shaky breath in. “How did you find me in the tunnels?” 

The bounty hunter doesn’t say anything. The wind sends the edge of his cape whispering across your leg. His hand is steady on your back. 

“Let’s talk about it later,” he finally says. You turn around in protest, but he beats you there. “You’re upset. And you need to ice your foot.” 

He’s right. You nod, and turn around to finish the last couple bolts while he gathers up tools. When you’re done, you yawn into the back of your wrist. He’s already in the cockpit doing the systems check and flight prep. He has bodies that need to be delivered. You’re ready for another night in space. 

Later, he wakes you, and he’s still in his armor which means he probably won’t sleep next to you tonight. Instead he turns you on your side, battered leg up, and holds ice packs against your hurts. You’re half asleep, but manage to mumble a thank you to him. He doesn’t reply, but before he leaves you for the cockpit, you feel the cold touch of beskar against your temple.

* * *

You dream of grit lodging under your fingernails. You dream there’s another stone behind every one you dig loose. You dream of a squatting creature chewing to your left. 

You jerk awake, elbowing your bedmate and in a moment of panic forget he's there by your choice. You shove yourself away, until your leg touches the hull wall. 

"It's me," he calls, and there's a faint touch on your leg. You can smell stale canvas clothes, and something clean. It’s the second day of hyperspace, and although you’ve spent longer than forty-eight hours traveling through it, this time it’s suffocating. You touch your fingers to his, making sure they are fingers and not claws. "Just me." You close your eyes and hear Anijae. _She's a fool. She's not coming back. Haven't you heard the stories?_

"Bad dream," you whisper. 

"Come here," he tells you, and guides you back to the blankets defending you against the frozen floor. His skin is warm and when you press your cheek into his naked shoulder, you find the clean smell is him. Solid, whole, a tinge of steel. He runs a hand from your shoulder blade to your hip, down to your knee. Over and over, until your breath comes naturally.

* * *

_Yesterday_

You do what you used to do at home when you were angry. You roll up your bedroll and scream as hard as you can into it. 

Your throat is hoarse when you’re done, but it’s worked. Whatever excess energy you were boiling in is now in the pillow. 

“You will walk out of this ship, into town, and buy supplies,” you tell yourself. You’re...mad. At yourself. You can do this. You love going to the store. You count backwards from five. 

Before you can think better, you’re on your feet and down the ramp. You aren’t sure what it is, but you can feel exhaustion leaving your legs as you stride with purpose. _Ten minutes_ , you tell yourself, and jam a thumb in your pocket to find the credits Mando had left you. _It’s ten minutes_.

* * *

Karga grumbles but leaves his post at the window to surrender his fifty credits to Cara, who has won by two minutes flat. 

“Thank you, boss,” Cara says and pockets it. She’s taken to lounging back in her chair, laughing at Mythrol who was coerced by the kid’s cuteness to bounce him up and down on his knee. She turns to Mando who is still watching out the window. 

“All right, she made it past the town gate. Time to go, kid,” he says and collects his charge. 

“Don’t be a stranger, Mando,” Karga says, grasping the hunter’s outstretched hand. “Bring your elusive babysitter in sometime, I’d love to tell her how she cost me one hundred credits.” 

“Maybe next time,” he offers while nodding to Cara. He turns to Mythrol. “Mythrol.”

“Mando.”

He leaves, heading out toward the landing zone.

* * *

The vendor hands you change and a crate full of medical supplies, as well as a bottle of spotchka. You missed the taste of citrus-laced booze and wouldn’t mind some if Mando is going to haul you out to uncharted regions. He has a toothy grin you return while leaving. Adults mill about under the distant sun, wrapped in oranges and greens. The smell of fried goods and cured meat fills up the street. You’re tempted to stop and buy some, but this was already a big step for you, so you pass by and take the memory of black pepper and pungent smoking fat with you out of the town gates. 

You move cautiously through the streets. It’s hard not to draw attention when you have a crate as wide as your body filled with medical goo, but no one stops you. A woman sitting outside the city purser's office nods pleasantly at you. She wears trooper stripes and gauntlets. You return her smile but keep walking, and out of the corner of your eye she saunters back inside. 

Once you’re outside the city gates, you can see Mando standing at the foot of the Razor Crest. The kid reaches his arms out to you, and Mando looks down at him before shaking his head. They’re a pair. A Mandalorian hunter and his green, force-sensitive child. His hand hangs loose by his blaster. You wonder if he’s watching behind you. There are things that live in the deep recesses of space you should be afraid of, and although you think he’s one of them, there’s no denying the fearlessness he instills in you when he’s totally still. Anyone behind you can see he’s focused on your stride. You did a brave thing today. 

Maker, that armor looks fantastic, you muse. He can’t have any idea. He doesn’t own a mirror. Something in your stomach jerks. 

“Medical supplies,” you tell him once you reach the ramp. “As requested.” He reaches in and finds your bottle of glowing spotchka. “It’s _medicinal_ ,” you say, over-enunciating. 

He tips his helm down at you as you smile up into his visor. You haven’t totally forgiven him for giving you this errand, but maybe if he leaves everything on and puts the child to bed you can coax a sweet reward for yourself out of him. 

“Scat,” he says and jerks his helmet up the ramp. You tuck your chin down to hide the grin on your face and climb aboard.

* * *

Mythrol waits until Dune is seated and filling out a port manifest. 

“You know they’re sleeping together.”

Karga coughs so loud on his steaming spotchka, Dune feels obligated to get up and slap him on the back. He’s an old man, he can’t take a shock like that. 

“How would you know?” he manages to get out. Cara peaks out the window. Mando is there with his in-house nanny, jerking his head to get up into the ship while he tells the mechanics to finish fueling. 

“There’s no way,” Dune says. She’s a cynic. She has to be. Maybe. Perhaps. 

“They are,” Mythrol repeats. The two at the window give him a long side-eye glance. “I have a very sensitive nose. Amphibian? Remember? The Mandalorian smells like dirt. Or…” he flails his hands, searching. “Leather and metal. This time he had a sweet smell on him. That sticky stuff you put in your tea, boss.”

Karga scrunches his eyebrows. “Honey?” 

Mythrol’s face wrinkles. “Yuck. Yes. It’s spicier though. Floral.”

Cara raises her eyebrows. “Our Mando wearing floral?” 

Karga stretches his palms out. “We don’t know what he’s like under that suit.” They look at one another. Then out at the Crest. 

“One hundred credits they’re sleeping together,” Cara calls. 

Karga smiles bright and wide. “Two hundred. And you’re on.”

* * *

_Today_

You woke up alone, which is normal. You dress, heat up too much caf, and climb carefully up to the cockpit to check on the kid, who is still fast asleep in his bassinet. You glance out the viewport, then the navigation readout, and frown. 

“Weren’t we just here?” you ask, coming to stand next to him in the pilot’s seat. He takes one hand off the controls and brings it to rest against the back of your thigh, fingers absently flexing. 

“We have some unfinished business here,” he answers. You hum in response and let him touch you until he has to take the ship through the atmosphere. It’s nighttime on this side of the planet, and you’re landed in the same spot as a few days ago. The moons are low on the horizon line. 

“Your unfinished business with me is a field trip?” 

“Something like that,” he says, and leads you into the woods. The moons are high, and his beskar armor glows under it. You wonder what a division of Mandalorian hunters in clean steel would look like hunting together, moving silently through the underbrush. It would probably be bad for your self-control though. One Mandalorian in his full suit is enough to make your heart speed up. He treks along the stream you and the kid had followed days ago, then turns sharply down a dry creek bed. The kid's crib follows him. 

You open your mouth to speak, but he probably knows where he’s going so you close it and follow after, pulling your jacket tighter around yourself. The sweet aroma of wet soil and deep drinking river plants evaporates and is replaced by...something warm. Tangy. 

It grows stronger the further downhill you go. The slope had been easy at first but it drops all of a sudden from a thick-ferned forest to a barren stone gully full of steaming pools. Mando’s already standing below the drop off, so you sit on the ledge and slide down into his arms. You look up into the visor, trying to mimic his bodily crowding from days ago. 

“Hot springs?” 

“For the bruising,” his hands along your ribs don’t squeeze, just hold. The crib floats behind him. 

“Okay. I forgive you for sending me for med supplies,” you say. “Is this a naked soaking trip?”

“You need a shower,” he states and drops his hands. He takes a few steps back from you. You flick your eyes over him, he’s reflecting the gurgling water under moonlight. “So a naked soaking trip.”

“That’s the vaguest way anyone’s told me I’m sweaty and gross.” You’re already kicking off your boots and unbuttoning your shirt. The helmet isn’t moving but you’re sure he’s watching with interest you pull at your clothes. But once you get to the third button, shyness overcomes you. “Could you...turn around?” 

The helm draws back. “What?” He sounds confused. 

“You haven’t seen me naked,” you explain. Or try to. It’s really odd for you. He’s felt your nakedness dozens of times now, but the seeing...this is different. In hyperspace you’re dark matter to him. Out here you’re real. 

“Tell you what,” he barters. “I’ll take off the armor. You take off your clothes.”

“Will you get in with me?” you ask. 

“Maybe.” He unclips his munitions belt, and toes his boots off, pushing them off to the side. Then waits. 

“Yes, or no deal.” 

He stands still, and you think he’s going to lean back into his heel. But instead, he reaches up and carefully unclasps the pauldrons, setting them to the side. Then the cuisses. Then he waits. 

“The helmet stays on.”

“No deal.” 

His voice develops an edge. “I can’t do that.”

“Blindfold me.”

That gets his attention. You finish the buttons on your shirt, and let it slide down your back behind you and pool on the ground. Your undershirt dampens with steam from the pools and catches on your skin. His chest-plate rises. 

“Deal.” 

When you finally slide into the pool it’s the first time in months you’ve felt really, truly clean. It’s hotter than the fresher’s shower at its highest setting. You submerge yourself for what you count to be a full twelve seconds before popping up. It’s too luxurious. You might never leave the rich mineral water. Mando is behind you, kneeling at the edge dipping his fingers in the water before taking off the rest of his clothes. His cuirass stands propped up with the rising phoenix and flak vest, and his drop holster is near the edge of the pool, just in case. The canvas flight suit lays on top of everything. The last layer before the metal. 

He’s letting you have this quiet moment to take everything in before he wraps a piece of black cloth around your head, and cuts you off from the moonlight. 

He stands and pulls his soft long sleeve shirt over his head, and you dip everything but your nose in the water to hide the pink grin you’re sporting. He’s broad in the shoulder, but you knew that, and has functional muscle tone from carrying pounds of steel across his body everyday. When he gets to his trousers, you float on your back and look up into the night sky so he has some privacy. You hear him groan behind you. 

“Hm?” 

“I…” you tip your head back a little to peak at him upside down, then roll over because _good Maker_ \- he’s palming himself through his trousers, and there’s a sheen of sweat across his skin. “I’ve seen naked women before.” You think he’s talking more to himself than you, to remind himself that nakedness exists, and that you haven’t re-invented the sphere.

This pool is shallow, so you drop your feet and bend your knees to face him while keeping warm. You almost want to stand up and let him see your body. You kill that thought, and opt for a tastier one instead. 

“Take your pants off,” you tell him. The helm tips down a degree, and his eyes must have been closed before because he leans back a little before hooking his thumbs in the waistband and pushing them down, leaving him in soft underclothes. He carefully slides those down his legs as well, leaving him bare, and you squeeze your thighs together. 

“Are you ready for this?” 

“Yes ple-” _he means the blindfold_ “-okay.”

“You are unbelievable,” he grumbles. But kneels down next to the pool and ties the blindfold around your eyes. It smells like his skin, and it must live somewhere close to his body. The world goes pitch black, just like the hull. You hear the vacuum seal open on his helm, and he breathes easy. The first thing he does is lean down and press a kiss to your steaming shoulder. You stay perfectly quiet and just listen to him slip into the water, the way he dissolves into it. 

“How did you know this was here?” you ask softly. You lean back against the pool’s wall, let him stretch out if he wants. 

“I saw it on the planet scan. The surface is covered with them.” You hear him gulp in a breath and duck under the water. He’s down there a while - you count eighteen seconds - before he comes up for air. After a few seconds he answers again. “I don’t know how long this lead will take.” You nod, understanding, and let him pull your body across his so you’re straddling his thighs. Usually he wraps around you. This is better you think as he nuzzles his nose along your voice-box and inhales your skin. His hair is wet against your cheek, and you run your nails along his scalp, drawing a content noise from him. 

You sit together for a long time. The moons parade across the sky, and Mando holds you above the water, pressing salty, open-mouthed kisses to your lips and tongue. His hands glide up and down your body, across your back, under your thighs, they blend with the water, and for a while it feels like currents rather than hands. You think of the rivers back home you’d swim in, their rush, push and pull at your body. He runs his fingers on your hair, enjoying the changing texture, tugging at your lip. 

You’re suddenly desperate to have him inside you, and hope to death you’re slick enough. You wind your arms above his shoulders and try to bite his earlobe. 

“What do you want?” His voice deepens with arousal. One palm covers your breast, weightless. The other wraps strong around your middle, pressing your bodies together so he can grind against your center. 

“Your-” you gasp because he’s already teasing the blunt tip against your slit, silky smooth. “Fingers.”

“Okay,” he says, and there’s a low whine leaving your throat as he slides one finger in perfectly, and presses it in and out until you’re crying out. 

“More?” he asks. He kisses your nose, your cheeks, he’s getting impatient. “Fuck, please, I thought about this all night,” he whispers to your neck and everything comes tumbling out of you. 

“Please, just please, I want you inside me,” you think you say, and then he’s holding your hips steady, as he eases his body into yours. Your back arches as your mouth falls open making a shameless noise. He lets it happen. 

“Fuck, look at you,” he gasps, because _he can_ , and bites into your shoulder. You’re worried he’s going to finish before you’re had your fill of him, but he holds you tight against him, back muscles rigid under your palms. “I wanted you while I was tracking you. I thought-" you squeeze around him and he swears softly "-that I’d take you on the ground.” You shudder at this new promise, and he rasps “stop moving.” 

You do your best to settle against him. Your breathing evens out. He presses his forehead against yours, bumps his nose into your cheek. His eyes are directly in front of you. His skin is so warm under your fingers. 

It’s in these still places the universe was birthed, full of minerals and protogenoi and cell fusion. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *I wrote this chapter five times to get it right.  
> **I'm sorry  
> ***Thinking of turning this into a series because I love playing with these characters.

_One weeks after the tunnels_

You fell on your back with a thump. Mando stood over you with his hands on his hips as you panted through the rolling pain. 

“Ow.” You really hope your glare holds the accusation you’re feeling. He was supposed to be _helping_ you, not throwing you around. You crawled up and reset, feet staggered and elbows tucked. 

“Try again,” he said. You waited for him to reset too, but instead he reached out and snatched your forearm, threw it wide, and kicked a foot out from under you. You toppled backwards. 

“How is this helping?” you said from the ground. He extended his hand to help you stand, and you consider dragging him to the ground. But he’s stupidly heavy, and you know it won’t work. 

“Let’s change it up,” he said once you were standing. Sweat dripped off your forehead and down your chest. He must have been dying under the armor. “When the Twi-lek attacked you, what kept you from striking? You had a shot at his side.”

“The _giant knife_ in my face.” you answered. Your tone was testy. You’d only talked about what happened enough for Mando to surmise you needed at least one defense lesson. You had argued his point because it had been a one off, right? You were normally at his side, protected by guiding fingers and the fact that everywhere you went people gave him a wide berth. 

“It was not that big,” he retorted with mild amusement lacing his voice through the modulator. He turned and gently uncurled the kid’s favorite spoon from his little hand. “Hush. You can have it back in a few minutes,” he tells the kid. The child huffs but sits down in his floating crib to watch you both with curiosity. “Let’s try with this.”

“What are we trying?” 

“I’m going to hold it to your face,” he said and took a cautious step toward you. “And you’re going to push it away.”

You froze. You weren’t interested in re-enacting what happened. “I don’t want to do that.”

He stopped in front of you. He is very annoying about this. You’d let him know by crossing your arms. But he had tilted his visor down, telling you he knew, he gets it, this is hard. And frankly, you’re putty when he gives you that look. You don’t even know what _that_ look is, but you can feel it, and it worked. You drop your arms and huff. “Fine.”

He touched inside your wrist with his gloved fingers. He knew. 

“Here’s what we’ll do,” he offered. “You follow my directions. I’ll keep it simple.” You nodded, glad you didn’t have to think through this scenario. Carefully he brought the spoon to your cheek and set it against your skin. Goosebumps crawled up your arms, but you stood still, and fixed your eyes on his helm. 

“Focus,” he drawled. “The point of having a weapon is to make your kill from far away. If someone is this close to you, the fights over. The right is your dominant hand. Yes?” 

“Yes.”

“Use your left hand to push mine out.” You used your palm to push his hand with the spoon away in slow motion. “Now punch me.” 

You scrunch your face and look over his armored body. “ _Where_?” 

“I’d say face but you’d break your hand.” Your eyes went wide. “Here, next to the pauldron,” he says, tapping a soft place next to his shoulder. You shoved your fist into the bare spot between shoulder and chest. “Do it again. Faster this time.” 

You ran through it again and again. He varied the location of the spoon, sometimes coming in lower, sometimes from above. But the strategy for you is the same: shove it away, get a punch in. He gave you simple directions; where to punch him, how hard to shove. In thirty minutes you can successfully knock the make-shift weapon away, land a hard punch, and create distance.

“Good,” he called. You don’t miss the way he tries to stretch his left side. It’s a big show. There’s no way your tiny fists hurt him through a flak vest and heavy suit. But you’re grateful all the same that he’s trying to boost your confidence. “Let’s try a new variation.”

He brought the spoon to your skin again. “Don’t push my hand away. This time, grab my wrist with both hands and turn my hand up and around.”

You tried it slowly. His bones go lax, letting you try the motion out. 

“Shouldn’t I be trying to get them to drop the weapon completely?” He resets, and this time you really had to apply effort to turn the spoon on him. 

“Assume any attacker knows you’re my crew,” he told you. He reset with the opposite hand. “Which means they’ll be trying to kill you.” You move fast, turning his wrist with everything in your biceps. Mando grunted at the unusual turning of his joints. “You’re not strong enough to take anyone in hand to hand. But you can turn the weapon on them.” 

“Thanks,” you said and dropped his wrist. He squared his shoulders, tapped the spoon against his holster. 

“Zip it.” He wasn’t having any arguments about this. You took a deep breath to focus. “This is a last resort. If you absolutely can’t get the weapon away, turn it on them.” He returned the spoon to the kid, who clanked it around inside his pram, big ears sticking out. Mando shook his head at his green child. 

“Should I…” you trailed off, trying to find the right term for what is surely a gruesome act. “Use it?”

“Yes,” he said. You nod. Quickly, you walked to him, and leaned into the chest plate until your nose pressed into it. Your shirt tightened as he planted a hand against your back. When you close your eyes it was like being in the ship hull, quiet and dark and full of familiar smells, things you know. 

“I don’t want to kill anyone.” The edge of his helm pressed into the back of your head. 

“Compared to me you’ll seem merciful.” He cupped your jaw with one hand and drew it up so he could look into your face. One thumb swept gently along the soft skin stretching under your chin. It always makes you shiver, and at this point you think he does it just because he can. You’ve been wondering if this is his version of apologetic. Soft touches contradicting the hard bones and steel plates of his body. 

You’ll take it.

* * *

_Two Days Ago_

_Thirty-six hours from Nevarro_

His lead is seventy-two hours through hyperspace, two sectors over. It’s a solemn flight. He has enough credits to re-fuel the Razor Crest a dozen times which means there’s money for repairs, lodging, and emergencies if need be. You’ll be out here for a long while. 

It’s quiet. The beat of gravity being shifted and pulled aside wades across the hull. You think it would be a good time to set up monitoring equipment and track power output and hyperdrive fluctuations. But you’ll need to wait until Mando has deserted the cockpit in favor of sleep. The last time you tried to hook your electronics in he’d grumbled about ‘lack of space’ and ‘breaking his concentration.’ It isn’t even something you have to do. It’s purely for your education in the ship’s systems. You’d poked into the hyperdrive enough times to know she functions fine. 

Until he does leave the controls, you play with the child. He’s happy to help you ice your bruises. They are all healing at different paces. The ones on your foot and shin are an ugly chartreuse, but the one on your thigh remains purple, and it’s all the Mandalorian’s fault. He’s managed to find it every time you’ve lain together, and it remains dark from his teeth and thumbs. 

You suppress a shiver running up your spine and focus on the child. He’s being very helpful, holding an ice pack against the top of your foot, content to be your assistant in this as well. He takes the pack away only to press it into the bruise again. You giggle at his surprise that it isn’t well yet. He’s wonderful. Always curious about what you’re fixing, always ready to toddle down the ramp and explore with you. He crawls onto your stomach to sleep after meals, and the thought of being without his weight brings an uncomfortable ache to your chest. 

“You’re being very helpful, buddy,” you tell him. His eyes and ears lift together, intent on your voice. “It will be good as new in a couple days.” His smile spreads, and he focuses on holding the ice pack still. You wish he could tell you his name. 

You secretly hope this lead goes nowhere. You don’t know what’s going to happen once you find the Jedi and surrender him to his kind. The Mandalorian hasn’t talked about it. You haven’t brought it up. But you’ll need to confront it soon. He hired you to care for the kid, but once there is no kid, there is no reason for you to stay. You’re a shit medic, and Mando is an engineer in his own right. He doesn’t really need you here. 

Staring at the top of the child’s soft head, you wonder what it’s like to be a fifty-year old baby, if time moves slower for him. He’s been alive longer than the Empire existed. Longer than the Mandalorian has been alive, and he will outlive him. The thought makes your head tighten. He’ll outlive you too. By a lot. Is he going to remember the Mandalorian in three hundred years? Will he remember the hours he spent re-arranging the bottom-most cabinets in your kitchen? Or chasing pollinating lizards through your greenhouse? His fingers are barely as wide as your pinkies. You smile a little because he’s become distracted by the air pockets forming in the bubbling ice pack, and pokes at them uselessly. 

In the back of your mind, you remember something about the Jedi, a whisper you’d heard about their ability to alter people’s will. To toss objects without touching them. To feel thoughts. You focus on the kid and think hard. 

_I love you, kid_ . He keeps poking at the bubbles. An unwanted tear forms in the corner of your eye and you swipe it away with your fingertips, letting the pack fall off your thigh. _I love you, I love you, I love you, even after I forget everything, I love you._

* * *

The dawn had broken with the Mandalorian leaving you naked and wrecked in the Razor Crest. He’d left practically sauntering while you were a puddle of goo, which wasn’t a bad start. 

But as you shoved a Devaronian’s body off your legs taking care to avoid the blood pouring out of his throat, all the good parts of the morning felt parsecs away. Your head ached, you couldn’t get the muscles in your neck to relax. Your legs were stiff with lactic acid, and down your calf were deep crimson gouges you couldn’t feel anymore until you set it against the grass and hissed at the wet sting. His body bled garnet into the phthalo green shore grasses. The smoke from his body hit your senses and you twitched, breathing hard. A sea breeze pushed it in the coast, and nausea overtook you even as you got to your feet, blaster in hand. 

He’d come out of nowhere. You’d only had a minute to hatch a plan. 

The Razor Crest was half a klick away, too far to run while defending a smaller body, so you’d done the best with what you had. You tucked the kid into a long-deserted sandpiper’s nest under thick bushes, pressing a kiss to his head and promising you’d be back for him. Then you’d drawn your blaster and taken off sprinting in the general direction of the ship. Your lungs had burned with the effort, and you found out the hard way the hunter was sporting some stolen goods when he refused to be knocked down with blaster fire directly hitting his chest.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” you’d mumbled. All you wanted was to lead him away from the kid. If worse came to worse, Mando would find the green bean later, he’d be fine. If you wanted a clean shot, you’d have to stop and that wasn’t an option. He wasn’t fast, but you were shaking too hard to aim precisely. Fuck, you had no plan. 

So you kept running, and turned to fire every so often, which only proved to enrage him more. You led him down to the sand, thinking he’d lose footing in the dunes long enough for you to get a decent shot in, but it was a mistake. Your legs were so tired, you took a sharp turn and slipped where the grasses faded to sand, and that’s when he’d caught you. 

“Where’s the Mandalorian?” the hunter snarled while squeezing a hand around your throat. “Where’s the _crab_ ?” You threw a knee into his hip, throwing him off balance. He recovered, shoving a sticky hand against your face into the dusty ground. “I want his _armor_.”

Some vicious scream erupted from your throat. You flung sand in his eyes and tried to crawl away, throwing the flat of your boot back into his nose. There’s a sick crunch and that does it. He’d dug his claws into your calf eliciting a scream and crawled up your body to shove your mouth in the sand. You thought you’d blacked out until he shoved you over straddling your waist, and dug _your_ blaster barrel against your sternum. 

“I want the prize, and the armor.” It was a revolting parody the way he’d drawn his cloak back to reveal a painted, stolen chest plate. “Make a matched set.”

Your mind blanked, and without hesitating you grabbed his wrists and turned the blaster nearly upside down, and surprise did the rest of the work. He slumped back over your legs, lifeless.

* * *

You had forced yourself to jog, blaster clutched and on high alert, back to the child, nearly a mile and a half on a bleeding leg. You collapsed before the nest you’d left him in, pushed all the brush away and took him tightly against your chest whispering that you loved him, and he was safe, and you’d protect him. His whole face is wet and snotty, but he settled when you wiped the tears out of his eyes with your sleeve. He gurgled and hummed the whole three miles back to the ship. It was a long fucking walk. What were you thinking walking so far from the ship?

You passed the body on your way back to the ship. For a second you thought about taking the time to get the beskar, then decided...if Mando wanted it he could get it. You hadn’t signed up to be a grave robber. You left it red and leaking, letting the tide lick at it. 

“Mando, are you there?” you called into the comm system. The ship felt hollow with just the two of you and only the ground protocol system running in the background. You had set the kid in the crib, peeled your jacket off, and hunched over the dashboard to breathe. 

“ _I_ _’m here_.” You swallowed the lump in your throat, relief flooding your head. 

“When are you coming back?”

No reply for a moment. You could hear forest brush crunching underfoot. “ _What happened?_ ” 

“A bounty hunter came after the kid and me.” 

“ _Stay on the ship. I’m coming_.” 

He’s there in twenty minutes flat, landing with precision in front of the viewport. You wave through it, and climb out of the cockpit as the hatch opens. He meets you halfway, and he starts assessing you before offering a greeting of his hand on your shoulder. 

“Are you hurt?” His voice is borderline angry. 

“I have, um,” you start. It doesn’t feel real. You have holes in your leg. Holes. “I breathed some sand in.” 

“What else?” He’s looking at the scrape on your nose from being shoved face first into the dirt. He knows you’re lying. 

“My leg is bleeding.” He swears quietly, gives your shoulder an involuntary squeeze. 

“Where’s the kid?” he asks, helm whipping up like he’d just remembered. 

“In the cockpit. He cried himself to sleep.” Your voice sounds far away. 

Mando is perceptive. He sees the change, and he slides a hand down to your waist and for fucks sake he’s being very touchy, and part of you feels dirty. “What did you do?” It’s asked quiet, just between the two of you. 

“I did the hand turn thing,” you say. “He shot himself in the throat.”

If you could read steel, you’d call the way the light glances off of his mask as regret. Both hands come to cup your cheeks as he tips the helm down to rest it against your forehead. You’re supposed to cry right now. You’re supposed to feel bad, but you don’t. 

“I’m not sorry,” you whisper between the two of you. “He…” your voice thickens as you remember the rage you’d felt rise in you. “He wanted the kid, and your armor. He called you a crab and said he wanted a matched set. He would have killed you both and I would die for the kid, I couldn’t let him-” finally, with a lurch, a sob breaks out, and wipe your nose with the back of your hand. You lean into the chest plate and let the exhaustion take over. 

In the daylight he is frugal with his affection, but now he makes an exception. He says “sweet girl” with something akin to lament, and scoops your legs out to carry you into the ship to tend to your weeping leg.

* * *

You came to the shore to cry. And you did. You let the sobs wrack your ribs until they ached. 

There’s a chemical cocktail percolating through your body. You are worn out. Exhausted. You sweep your hair out of your face and sit with your elbows on your knees. There’s a marine layer sitting pretty over the ocean, greying it out and muting the deep blues you’d fallen in love with that morning, before everything. Every inhale is clean. The sweet breeze blowing in sends whiffs of algae and wet creatures. It’s pushing the fog further in, and soon you’ll be surrounded in the mist. Part of you wants to dissolve into it. 

You weren’t stuck. You weren’t a burden to the Mandalorian. You thought on your feet, you tricked a dangerous criminal. You protected the child, and Mando with all the raw strength you had leftover. But more importantly you didn’t freeze. You have a red scrape over your rose from the dirt. You from a year ago wouldn’t recognize herself. You’re sporting new skills and new scars. The Mandalorian bandaged your leg up and told you it would scar. Bacta heals many hurts, but new skin is new skin. There will be half moons in your leg for years and that was that. He’d cleaned the sand off your face, and then let you wander away, within sight of the ship. His warning to stay close lingers in your ears. 

You close your eyes and track your change, your growth, your evolution. You make a sad half-smile at the ocean.

The Mandalorian finds you. He’s given away by grass crunching beneath his boots. You don’t turn around until he stops walking. He is a couple meters away, his hands hang tensed by thighs, thinking hard on something. 

“I’ll be okay.” It’s the best you can do right now. But it’s better than screaming at him. “Did you get the beskar?”

He doesn’t move. “I’ll get it later.” His voice is shot through. You try to keep your face neutral even as you work through the possibilities of what could make his voice sound like that. He squares his shoulders and turns his toes out. It makes him appear bigger all of a sudden. It’s inappropriate, but heat shoots up your chest. 

“You said you’d die for the kid.” He says it slowly, testing the words out. You stand as still as you can to mirror his posturing. “Is that true?”

“Why are you asking?” You don’t mean to be defensive. 

“People say things off of adrenaline highs,” he answers. The timbre in his voice rushes through you. 

“I meant every word,” you tell him. “I love the kid.” There’s a numbness in your chest and you want it to go away. You stare into the sharp eye-line. “You too, sometimes. I guess.” You don’t know when you became so full as to have something to pour back out. But it eases the numbing in your chest and replaces it with clover sweet bashfulness. You resist the urge to cross your arms, instead letting your sleeves billow out while his cloak rolls up in the air with a gust of wind. You feel your cheeks redden. It’s not the thing you’re supposed to say after a near death experience you don’t think. You’re supposed to wait until the drugs in your body hit normal levels. But he had asked. And you weren’t a coward. 

You bore into Mando’s visor, daring him to retort, to tell you off, to remind you this is temporary. But he doesn’t. He’s so still. Something flashes in the steel mask and catches in the air to mingle with salty seagrass. He takes a step forward, careful, and in a calculated move slides one glove off and lets it drop. You pull your eyebrows together as he takes a deliberate step. 

“Close your eyes,” he says. He strips the other glove off. 

“Why?” Curiosity laces your voice, and you take a careful step back while raising your hands to meet his vambraces. Gun oil and leather from his bandolier envelopes you along with the linen scent his clothes retain. How the fuck do his shitty flight suits smell like linen? 

“Close them.” It’s an order. You watch his chest plate rise and fall. He’s barely keeping a grip on his breathing. You close them. “Don’t. Open them.” He steps closer and you feel his body crowd against yours, and you almost topple back. He’s quick and slides a hand on your waist to tug you close. The vacuum seal hisses, and you feel the vibrating clunk of the helm clunk on the ground. His chin and mouth meet the crown of your head. You press your cheek into his warm, bare hand when it cups your face. His pinkies slide down the line of your throat. For a few moments, he presses his lips to yours in a series of chaste, careful kisses. A whimper escapes you, and he responds with the softest vibrations against your mouth. You blush under him. It’s over too fast and he leaves you dragging air into your lungs as he leans down to slip the helm back on. You wait until he tells you to open your eyes. 

“The kid,” he says. You stare where you think he’s looking from. “He is my priority. Everything I do is for him.” His voice is thick. “You’ve no obligation to him yet you’d fight bounty hunters three times your weight.” 

“You put him in my care,” you try to explain. “You trusted me to watch him. I’d do whatever it took to keep him safe.” 

A wily conviction unlocks in your chest. Mando hears it. He brings your knuckles to his mask and presses them into the cool metal. “You protected your own.”

You cock your head a little, thinking on the wording. “Yeah,” you decide. “I protected my own.”

* * *

Before you left that awful place Mando retrieved the armor and let the body sink into the sea, no more distinguishable than seaweed or coral formations. He came back with a cuirass slung over his shoulder and smelling of salt. Ocean water scrubs everything clean. 

You’d showered, taken care of the child who ate forever and ever, and curled up on your bedroll with the fresher light cracked open. The Mandalorian would join you eventually, he always did. You can close your eyes for a little while. 

When you blink open them it’s pitch black in the ship. You can hear the shower running along with the hyperdrive, so you’re back in subspace. You wonder if this trip was wasted. 

“Did you find you lead?” you ask in the quiet. He’s shuffling around, pulling soft clothes on, storing armor plates. He operates on touch alone in this pocket of space.

“No,” he answers. “I found their campsite and tracked an hour further. Then I…” he trails, and you hear what sounds like a shirt being pulled on. “I needed to turn around. I can’t explain it.” He nudges your shoulder, and slips in to curl against your back. He had persistently touched all afternoon and this was no exception; wrapping one arm under your neck and the other around your waist to draw you close against his chest. You held his forearms, content to feel him alive and breathing behind you. 

“In the tunnels,” he says after a while. “I experienced the same thing. I knew somehow the child was in trouble. I was waiting at the transit hub for you, but I started walking. I had just arrived when the Rodian cornered you.”

You close your eyes, and dip your nose to his skin. He’s clean, warm, whole. 

“Do you think he’s telepathic?” 

“I can’t be sure until I find a Jedi.” You nod. He presses a gentle kiss behind your ear, running the tip of his nose over the shell. “I need to make a deal with you.” 

You freeze, your torso clenches hard and you swallow. “What kind of deal?” 

“I need you to lay low for a while. That bounty hunter came after you even when he knew you didn’t have the child. There might be a puck on you.” 

You pull out of his arms and sit up. Your chest hurts, _fuck_. He sits up to wrap an arm against your waist. You’re grateful for the lack of light, the utter blackness falls around you and you might as well be translucent. 

“Stay on Nevarro. Karga will look after you. He already has a job for you.”

“You’ve thought about this?” Hurt leaches out of you. You protected the child, you protected Mando, and this was the thanks? The reward? 

“Karga suggested it. Your line of work would benefit the community. You’d be an asset.”

You’re quiet for a while. You dig your elbows in your knees and lay your head against your arms. Mando’s broad hand sweeps up and down your back. “Are you tired of protecting me?” It comes out muffled, but he hears. 

“Not at all.” His hand settles between your shoulder blades, barely touching the bare skin at the crown of your spine. “You keep the child safe, I keep you safe. That’s our agreement. I’ve seen how you protect your own.” You swell a bit, because there’s adoration in his voice. "I need to finish my task. Karga will keep you safer than I can right now." There's an unspoken _or else_ embedded in the sentence.

“Can I think about it?” 

"Yes." He leans over and rests his other hand just inside your thigh. His fingers are hot through your clothes. “Come here,” he says, pulling your waist. You tuck your head against his shoulder and breathe in his scent. It’s drowsy and electric, and you realize your soap might have overtaken his. He tugs your leg up over his thighs so you're wrapped around him. With one of his hands he draws circles outside your knee.

* * *

You stare into the monitoring screen, sipping your caf. The air filter sweeps the toasty smell away before you can really enjoy it. The hyperdrive’s output hasn’t dropped below ninety percent in an hour. It’s running fine. Every system in the ship is running fine. 

“I’ll go.” 

Mando flicks the auto-pilot switch on and swivels in the pilot chair to face you. You hold your steel cup against your lips. Reaching blindly onto your console, you offer him the schematic draft you’ve been working on since your first set down on the Crest. 

“But only because I finished it.” Mando takes it. He leans back in his chair, legs wide, and examines your work. Minutes later he sets it aside and lands a hand on your knee to squeeze. “And because you’re taking me to Nevarro and not Pamarthe.” 

“You don’t want to go home?” 

You shrug, and sip your beverage. “It’s boring. I need a project. And I like Mythrol.” Mando snorts and you smile hopelessly. 

He jerks his helmet in a ‘come here’ motion, and you set everything aside to settle astride him in the chair. His hands curl around your ribcage, your toes just touch the ground and hold you still. His armor used to intimidate you, now it feels comfortable beneath your thighs and hands. It’s a safe place to land. 

“Don’t ditch me there, by the way,” you say in a firm voice. You dig your palm into your eye to keep any traitorous tears from falling. 

“I won’t,” he says, pressing his thumbs into the soft skin of your torso. It makes you want him between your legs, around your chest, tucked into the place your shoulder meets your throat. You aren’t sure how you’ll sleep without the planes of his torso vibrating beneath your fingertips. 

“Promise me.” It falls out before you can stop it. You dig your fingers into his cowl, and watch his chest plate rise. 

“My name is-” 

You jerk back. “You have a real name?” 

Mild laughter falls through the modulator, and you smile brightly because the sound is so rare. “I haven’t used it since I swore the creed. Our names and faces are forgotten. They are only used to unify.” You nod at his succinct summary, trying to get the smile to leave your face. He tilts his head at you. “Pay attention.” 

“I am,” you say. “Is a name like a promise?” 

“Yes,” he answers, and drags you closer, pressed intimately together. You do your best not to grind down because this is _important_ , he can take you like this in his chair, in his armor _later_. “You protected my clan like it was yours. You should have my name.” 

With one hand you trace the signet on his pauldron. The other you flatten against his collar bones. In a hushed voice to tell him, “Promise me you won’t ditch me on that lava pit.”

“My name is Din.”

“Din,” you test on your tongue. Beneath you, his whole body wakes up. It’s a clap breaking sound barriers. Blast charges coercing bedrock deep, down underground to move. The thud of a meteor splitting tectonic plates. The first warm patter of swollen raindrops on fresh tilled soil. 

“Din Djarin.” 

“It’s a good name,” you say touching your forehead to his helmet. 

It is a good name. 


End file.
